


Contentment

by wtfoctagon



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, minor mentions of age gap enabled emotional manipulation in chapter 9's flashback
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-02-09 23:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 22,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2001759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfoctagon/pseuds/wtfoctagon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Asami slowly falls in love with Korra, and she doesn't mind- she's already learned that love goes far beyond distinctions of romantic and platonic and she's just happy to have someone like Korra in her life. Korra, on the other hand, is having more trouble with distinctions on just how she loves the heiress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Girlfriends

Asami honestly had no idea why she did it.

 

Getting over Mako hadn’t been easy, but it happened smoothly enough. A few crying sessions here and there, getting drunk some nights; and when the haze of emotions and hurt had passed, allowing logic, rationality, and self-forgiveness to settle in. He’d cheated on her, then hadn’t even given her the dignity of a proper breakup before calling it official with the Avatar. It wasn’t exactly attractive. Or any of her fault. And so she moved on.

 

Which was exactly why she was so embarrassed with what had happened- ashamed, even. It wasn’t that she still had feelings for him. She was, very thoroughly, over him. It was just that- well, she was feeling vulnerable. Completely, utterly emotionally vulnerable and he was right there, and it was familiar, because they both knew how to react to one another, they had an established pattern, and it was the only thing that Asami had in the moment that was safe and stable-

 

She was filled to the eyeballs with excuses and bullshit. Everything was falling apart. Her dad was in jail. Her company was going under. He was there. He knew how to take care of her. She went for it. She was ashamed.

 

Seeing him lie to Korra about their fight really was the last nail in the coffin. It was almost funny- only Mako could pull off being dishonest and disrespectful to both ex girlfriends in a few short words. It had to be a new record or something. It was wholly unattractive and he ceased to be any kind of candidate for kissing or emotional support in her eyes. Not that she wouldn’t give him a shot at being friends if he apologized.

 

She wasn’t holding her breath, though.

 

It was horrible that she was happy about Korra’s memory returning, and breaking it off with him. It was horrible and she was a horrible friend, but Korra deserved so much better than a lovably earnest but compulsively dishonest and clueless boy. It was a breath of fresh air and she just… felt more happy for Korra than she ever had when the avatar was happy with Mako.

 

It was hard to explain. She just thought it was nice. The Avatar could stand to be honest with her own happiness a little more, especially with everything that was happening.

 

She had never had anything against Korra, despite what had happened. And when they began to talk more and become a little closer after harmonic convergence (Korra being everywhere to help with repairs and explain the portals to humans and spirits alike, Asami making big money selling various vehicles to help with the cleanup, them always bumping into each other and then planning to bump into each other), Asami had never felt so relieved. Mako or no Mako, she’d always wanted to be better friends with her.

 

And now, there was no Mako. Not between them, at least.

 

“So, when I was gone,” Korra started, somberly starting the car forwards again. “Did he tell you that we broke up?”

 

They were driving away from the docks after they received the news, looking for the new airbender despite Mako’s awkward salute. The wind blew into their hair and Asami absently noted that their acceleration was smoother than just moments before. Korra was always better at things when she wasn’t trying too hard.

 

“Yeah,” She replied, feeling her gut tense a little. “We all knew.” _And I still kissed him like the shitty person I am._ “Sorry.”

 

Korra closed her eyes and flushed. “That’s… pretty embarrassing.” Asami wanted to tell her that she, of all people, had nothing to be embarrassed about.

 

This was it. This was her chance. Honesty. Good friendship. Owning up to her mistakes. Taking responsibility for what she did.

 

“Actually, I need to tell you something about that, and, I should have told you this sooner, but, while you were gone…” It came out in a rambling rush, but she lost her steam as soon as she got to the actual confession part. Typical. She looked at Korra guiltily out of the corner of her eyes, gauging her reaction. “I kind of…” _oh, get it out already._ “Kissed him.”

 

It sounded as bad as she thought it would. “I’m sorry,” she added, deflated.

 

Korra laughed. The sound made Asami’s heart jump. She wasn’t mad. She wasn’t hurt.

 

“No wonder he’s so nervous around us,” she said, still grinning.

 

“You’re not mad?” Asami asked.

 

“No,” Korra says, as if the notion is ridiculous, and Asami feels forgiven. “I mean, I kissed Mako when he was going out with you, so.”

 

She’d forgotten about that. When Korra said it like that, it sounded fair. In a twisted way. But she remembered that Korra had never told Asami herself, when the heiress took a breath and plunged into honesty. She wasn’t mad- but she still felt a bit playfully miffed.

 

So she put on her best unimpressed face. “You _what_.”

 

She wished she could frame Korra’s reaction. In one of Varrick’s movers, perhaps. The Avatar looked like she had kicked Asami’s puppy, eyes wide and fearful. It was cute.

 

“I’m so sorry!” She said, tensing up. “I thought you knew!”

 

No thanks to you, Asami thought, not unkindly. Again, she was over it. She relaxed, fighting the urge to laugh and feeling a little smug.

 

“I’m kidding. I knew a long time ago.”

 

Korra laughed again, and Asami realized she could really get used to being the cause of it.

 

“Well, whatever happened with Mako,” she chuckled, eyes back on the road, “I’m glad it hasn’t come between us. I’ve never had a girlfriend to hang out with and talk to before. Except for Naga.”

 

And the wistful smile on the girl’s face really showed that polarbear dogs were great for hugs, not so much for conversation. She remembered that the Avatar was isolated since childhood and the small smile tugged even more at her heartstrings.

 

(Of course, a small part of her absently chuckled at Korra’s use of the word “girlfriend”. Normal girls using that word to merely denote female friends had been an endless source of confusion and pubescent embarrassment when she’d been in boarding school in Ba Sing Se.)

 

She turned and opened her mouth to say, let’s go get lunch together, let Mako look for the airbender for a while-

 

“This is nice.”

 

Asami agreed wholeheartedly. Then, she agreed that Korra should keep her eyes on the road.

 

“Vine- VINE!”

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------


	2. It's not weird

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ikki runs off after being tormented again. Asami is sure that she won't be much help. Things end up working out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not entirely Korrasami, sorry. I wanted to establish Asami's bisexuality and delve into the queer history of the avatar world, and I kind of had to get it out of my system. Next chapter will be very fluffy, though. Promise.

Truth be told, Asami wasn’t expecting to be much help when Pema roped her into finding Ikki. She’d come to the island after a few meetings with clients hoping to catch Korra, but she and Tenzin had run off to secure the new airbender and Pema’s second daughter had disappeared after having been bullied again. She was glad to help, it was just that… Well, she’d never had siblings before. It had been her, her father and mother, and the household staff. Then her mother died and she was sent to Ba Sing Se, and she supposed her friends there had become a little like sisters, but she knew that it was different. If she found Ikki, what would she say?

She learned to socialize and sweet talk business people into deals. Etiquette lessons didn’t quite cover counselling or consoling. Especially children.

“Ikki!” She called. Kya had taken the inside of the temple and she the outside. Pema was scolding the kids in the dining room. “Ikki, where are you?”

“Over here…” Came the dejected reply- it was odd, associating the word ‘dejected’ with ‘Ikki’. Asami looked up to see the top of twin buns on the roof of the meditating pavilion.

“Hey,” She started, unsure of what to do. Or how to console someone on a rooftop that she couldn’t reach. “Wanna talk about what happened?” She asked, coming around to lean on the pillar closest to the girl.

“Not really.” Yeah, with how awkward Asami sounded, she would have said no too.

“Okay. Wanna talk about something else?”

There was a brief silence. Asami thought about leaving the poor kid alone to her devices and telling Pema that she was safe, at the very least.

“Why do you like boys?”

The question was so abrupt and so abruptly enthusiastic that Asami didn’t know to be flustered or relieved. Nosey tactless questions asked like that had to mean she wasn’t that upset, right?

“I don’t know,” Asami said, shrugging. “I just do.”

“But they’re gross,” came the huffy reply. “And noisy and mean and stupid.”

Asami laughed. “Anyone can be like that.”

She could almost hear the grumpily crossed arms. “Girls are nicer. And prettier. And better.” Ikki’s enthusiasm trailed as she rattled off the reasons. Asami peered up at the edge of the roof, starting to have a hunch about what this was, and wondering if she was right.

“What brought this on?”

She probably shouldn’t have been that blunt or straightforward. Again, this wasn’t her forte. Children were simpler, more fragile. She, of all people, knew that.

“Jinora was reading to us about the Avatars.” The girl finally spoke. “I said that I wanted to get married to Avatar Kyoshi and she said it was weird.”

Asami imagined that she had been crueler than that because precocious children could be. And she’d seen Meelo in action- he must have agreed with what the older sister had been saying with ten times the gusto, just because.

She sighed. But she was a little hopeful, she guessed. If there was anyone on the island that Ikki could have talked to, Asami was probably not the worst. She hoisted herself to sit on the pavilion’s rail, settling in for a long talk.

“It’s not weird. I wanted to marry Princess Yue when I was younger.”

A short scramble later, Ikki’s head was hanging down from the roof, peering at Asami  in hopeful shock.

“Really?”

The sheer earnestness of the question made Asami laugh brightly. “Yes, really. I thought that she was _so_ pretty and kind.”

It was so strange to see the human energy ball falter and hesitate- but she did, averting her eyes and biting her lip in uncertainty.

“So… You don’t think I’m weird?”

Asami shook her head. “Not at all.” She patted the railing beside her. “Come down.”

Ikki dropped herself from the roof with a short flip and a gust of air, settling herself firmly on the railing. The finesse with which these kids airbended never ceased to amaze her.

“Jinora said that I was weird and that girls weren’t supposed to like girls,” the airbender shot out, “And that I’d never be able to marry a girl and that no one would like me.”

Asami blinked. “That must have… sucked.”

“It diiid!” Ikki said, beaming up at Asami. “She’s so stupid!”

“Well…” The heiress sighed. “She just doesn’t understand. A lot of people don’t understand in this world, kiddo.”

The girl blinked up at her, confused. Asami’s heart felt like breaking. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair at all, to have to tell a young girl that she had to be careful about who she loved and who she told. But at least, in this, Asami could save her from what she had to learn in tears.

“Girls who like girls and boys who like boys aren’t very common in the world. So a lot of people don’t understand that it’s not weird.”

“But they should!” Ikki insisted, huffing. “Why don’t they?”

Various explanations flashed in her mind; she had asked the same question, after all, digging into every book there was on the subject. Abbot Song’s Thesis on the Illusion of Gender, Princess Lian Sun’s Essay on the Heteropatriarchal Matrix, Memoirs of Saikaku Ihara… Most of which was probably too complicated to assuage the girl’s frustration. And launching into how gender was a social construct would probably break the girl’s brain.

“It wasn’t always like this,” she started. “Airbenders didn’t care who was in love with who, and the Water tribes openly celebrated relationships between men. There was an Earth King a long time ago who cut his sleeves off rather than wake his boyfriend in the morning by getting up.”

“Really?” Asami nodded. “So why did it change?”

“It started with Chin the Conquerer,” she said. “He started making laws so that anyone who dated anyone of the same gender got arrested.”

“Arrested?” Ikki’s eyes bugged out.

“Yeah. When Avatar Kyoshi defeated him, some places changed the law, some places didn’t. When Firelord Sozin started the war, though, he put the law back into place.”

“Why?” Ikki whined.

Power, the idea of masculinity as the superior in an effort to subjugate the nations, and a false understanding of balance of Yin and Yang, among other things. Asami thought about telling her that some historians thought that Sozin had always been angered by his attraction to Avatar Roku. She decided against it- it wasn’t proven, and it wouldn’t do to assume.

“Who knows?” She shrugged. “What ended up happening was that a lot of people were born being told that it was wrong. Over a hundred years, the world just… changed.”

“Even the air nomads?” Ikki asked, fiddling with her fingers.

“No, they didn’t. They always believed that love was free. But after the Fire Nation invaded…”

There was a brief silence as it sunk in for the airbender girl. Asami had always wondered how they took it, the enormous burden of an entire culture on their shoulders. They were the last airbenders of the world, the last ones to carry on the legacy. Asami wondered if they understood that, and often hoped that they didn’t.

Ikki was quiet for a while. Asami studied her pout and the way her chin rested on her chest, wondering if she’d said the wrong thing.

“This is stupid. And unfair.”

“I know.” Oh, how she knew. “I’m sorry.”

Another pause. “Will I ever be able to find a girlfriend?”

The question was so trembling, so small, that Asami put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Of course you will. It’s uncommon but it’s not _that_ uncommon.”

“How do you know?”

Asami smiled. “Because I’ve had girlfriends too,” she said, leaning in conspiratorily.

Ikki gasped and gaped in wonder. Asami felt undeserving. Before the girl could rattle off questions in rapid fire, Pema emerged from the temple and called for them.

“Ikki! There you are!”

“Hi mom!” She yelled back. Asami waved.

“Dinner’s ready! Come back inside!”

Asami saw the girl about to protest, so she preempted. “We will! Thank you!”

Ikki pouted up at her as Pema went back inside. “But I-”

“Ah-ah. You have to go inside. You’ve worried your mother sick.”

“But-”

“How about this?” Asami slid off the railing, facing the girl. “You be good to your mom and I’ll tell you more about my old girlfriend.”

Ikki immediately stuck out her hand. “You have to shake on it! No take-backs!”

They shook, and Asami laughed at the determined grab and shake. “No take-backs. Now go inside.”

Ikki gave her another mock skeptical look before grinning widely and hugging her. The heiress barely had time to return it before the airbender scootered off towards the temple.

She quietly scolded herself for the swelling pride in her chest- no need to be self-congratulatory for something anyone would have done. But she couldn’t quite help herself. She’d often wondered what it would have been like if someone had been there to tell her that it wasn’t weird, when she was eleven and crying that the girl from school moved away, or later, when she was fifteen and reeling about a drunken kiss. It would have been better. Less heartbreaking. Hope and giddiness filled her to the brim at the thought of being able to shield Ikki from that.

Then, she wondered somberly, if she should have promised to tell the girl about Jia. It was a sad, sad story. Ikki could feel cheated.

Asami sighed and headed towards the temple. It was for another day. She’d figure it out.


	3. Hard Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra can't sleep. Asami forgot to.

There was a knock at her door. Asami’s heart flinched because it’d been long enough since that she wouldn’t ask her father what he wanted out of habit, but not long enough that she would forget how he’d come to her room to say goodnight. She rose from her bed, rolling up the prototype diagrams she had been reviewing and placing them on her desk as she passed towards the door.

“Korra?”

The avatar smiled sheepishly in her blue pajamas. It was cute. “Hey Asami.”

Asami smiled back. “Hey. What’s up?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Couldn’t slee-” Asami whipped her head around to look at her clock. There was no way it was late enough to qualify as being unable to sleep.

Two hours past midnight. Asami blinked. She hadn’t meant to stay up that late.

“I’m sorry,” Korra started, misinterpreting her expression. “I didn’t mean to bother you-”

“No!” Asami exclaimed. “No, of course not; sorry. I was just surprised by how late it was. Come in,” she said, opening the door and stepping aside. “Is anything wrong?”

The Avatar flashed her a wry, grateful smile as she entered. “No, I just- I guess I’m just not used to sleeping on an airship, is all.”

Asami gestured to her bed, inviting Korra to sit as she followed. “Engine too loud?” she asked, crossing her legs on the green covers. “I can go look at it if you want-”

“No! It’s fine,” Korra chuckled, settling across the engineer. “You don’t need to. I was just wandering and saw your light on. I hope I’m not bothering you.”

_You’re never a bother_ , Asami thought. “Not at all. I should thank you, actually-” she laughed at herself. “I would have worked through the night if you hadn’t come.”

“Wow.” Korra blinked. “What were you working on?”

“Some prototypes for cargo planes,” Asami said. “I’ve been wanting to expand on Varrick’s biplanes so that they can hold more weight. There’s a big market for express shipping, and working on sturdier small aircraft  instead of faster ships might be my way in.”

Future Industries, being a subset of Varrick’s shares, had been granted a large portion of his capital in legal proceedings after he’d run off. This included money _and_ creative property, much to Asami’s delight. Varrick was inventive, she had to give him that, but she was a much better engineer. Future Industries was well on it’s way back to the top.

“I really want to wipe the image of arms manufacturing from our name, you know? Making people’s lives easier, not killing them. Less tanks, more cars, and whatnot.” Asami blushed when she realized that she was too close to bragging and that the shop talk was probably boring Korra.

“That’s wonderful, Asami.” Korra’s smile was so… heartfelt. “I’m glad.”

Something about the way that the avatar had said it made Asami’s chest shake. Maybe it was the fact that it was her first time being sincerely praised after her father had been incarcerated. Maybe it was the pure sentiment. She smiled as she tried not to cry. She’d been spending too much time around businesspeople and clients and not enough around friends.

“Thanks.” She chuckled bashfully. “I’ll stop before I bore you to death.”

“It’s not boring!”

Asami raised skeptical brow. Korra laughed. “I mean, okay, I’m not gonna pretend I know anything about running a company, but it’s nice to hear about what you’ve been doing.” She grinned. “You’ve been working so hard.”

“So have you.”

“Pfft. At least your work isn’t repetitive and depressing,” she groused, slumping backwards onto the bed. “Try to fix the city, fail, get chewed out at a press conference, rinse and repeat.” She twirled her finger sarcastically, other arm draped over her forehead.

Asami chuckled and scooted up to lie on her stomach next to the avatar, cheek resting on her crossed arms. “At least you don’t have to deal with that anymore.”

Korra grunted. “Getting kicked out wasn’t exactly how I was planning to solve things.”

She turned her head towards Asami to give a wry grin. The other girl returned it.

“Hey, you did your best, and it’s not your problem now. Last I heard, the vines weren’t expanding anymore, and they’ll relocate everyone eventually.”

“I hope so.” The avatar let her arm flop over the top of her head, frowning at the bedsheets. Asami had a fleeting urge to reach out and hold her hand, but she knew it’d be too much.

“I just-” Korra started. “I just feel like I should have thought about it more before I left the portals open. About how it would affect everyone. I feel so stupid.”

“Mmm,” Asami hummed. She didn’t want the girl to feel worse, but, she did agree. It had been a bit of an impulsive decision. Maybe it was her own business education- one always thought through the pros and cons before signing off on anything.

“You think so too.” Korra laughed in embarrassment and turned away from Asami, groaning.

“Hey,” the engineer chuckled, slightly apologetic. “I’m sorry, I do think it was impulsive,” she said as she tugged at Korra’s shoulder. The Avatar only groaned more in response.

“Come on,” Asami laughed, fully on her side and tugging with both hands now. “I’m not judging you for it!”

Korra’s shoulders were shaking with laughter now, too, and Asami punched her lightly.

“ _Korra._ ”

The girl in question turned over, finally, with a lopsided smile. “Fair enough,” she relented. “I should have thought it through more.”

Asami smiled encouragingly. “Hey, you have the next solstice to decide if you wanna close them again.”

Korra shrugged. “I guess so.”

The darker haired girl opened her mouth to say something, but clapped the back of her hand over her lips as she felt a yawn coming up fast, trying to seal her mouth shut. She could only imagine how unattractive she looked, brow furrowed and cheeks blown out.

Korra sat up hurriedly, apologetically. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be keeping you up.”

Asami waved her hand dismissively near the end of her yawn, propping herself up. She wasn’t about to kick Korra out, not when the girl was still wide awake and upset. She didn’t really believe what the avatar had said earlier about being fine.

“It’s fine. You can stay,” she said, only a little bit bleary.

“You’re tired.”

“Only a little.”

“Still.”

Asami sighed and nudged Korra with her shoulder. “I won’t stop you. But you’re welcome to stay.”

The Avatar smiled gratefully. “Thanks.” She still shook her head and swung her legs off the bed. “I should go, though, and try to get some sleep. Tenzin will chew me out if I’m not up in time to meet the airbender.”

Asami rubbed her eye and followed Korra as she rose, wondering where the sudden wave of exhaustion had come from. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Korra replied, opening the door and stepping through it. “Asami?”

“Hmm?” She blinked, leaning against the side of the open door.

“Thanks.”

Asami beamed. “Good night, Avatar Korra.”

“Good night, Miss Sato.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wooooo chemistry. I know it's a bit of a slow burn but I promise more flirting in the next chapter. I think.


	4. Bedtime Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami's on night shift piloting through the mountains, and thinking about old friends. Korra can't sleep again. Naga just wants to be pet to sleep by someone who isn't depressed.

_“I’m serious, Asami, I’m worried about you.”_

_Asami only snorts and continues with the drills. Min walks over and catches her arm mid-swing, frowning._

_“Listen to me-”_

_“Why should I? Something good finally happens to me and you decide to get your nose in my love life now?”_

_“That’s not fair. I care about you-”_

_“Oh that’s rich.”_

_She yanks her arm away and walks towards the weapons stand, huffing. Min follows._

_“Asami, please.”_

_“Please what,” she sneers, shoving her bo staff onto the stand._

_Min looks straight into her eyes, mouth set in a determined line. “I want you to be careful. The way that Jia treats you really worries me-”_

_“And I should listen to you, why?” Asami spits. “Jia is my girlfriend now. She actually wants me,” she chokes out, voice trembling, eyes burning. “Unlike someone.”_

_The words fall like bombs in an armistice._

_“Asami.” Min’s voice breaks too, brown eyes glossing. “That’s not fair.”_

_“I should say the same thing!” Asami rubs at her eyes, angry, embarrassed for her tears. “You’re my best friend. Why can’t you just be happy for me?”_

_“Because I love you.” Min says it like it’s so final, so honest, with her fists clenched at her sides, as if her very lungs were clenching up in sheer ardour. “I’m sorry that it’s not the way you want it, but I do love you. So much.”_

Asami Sato was sitting at the bridge, hands resting lightly on the wheel when she heard the soft thumps of Naga’s paws against the open meeting chamber floor. She craned her neck to spy white fur padding up the stairs to the bridge.

“Can’t sleep, Naga?” She asked, smiling sympathetically. The polarbear dog woofed softly as her head poked over the top of the stairs.

“Ugh, tell me about it,” said Korra, rubbing her eye blearily as she ascended the steps with one hand gently scratching Naga’s side.

Asami swiveled around in her chair, smiling. The moonlight through the bridge windshield made Naga’s fur glow like a moon of her own. Korra was cast in pale light, brown hair let loose around her shoulders. Asami was wearing a simple fasten-up shirt with working pants- after all, a piloting night shift meant that one should be comfortable enough to last through the night but be presentable enough in case everyone had to be woken for an emergency. She did greatly prefer nightgown as pajamas, but, alas. The mountains they were passing through meant that they couldn’t simply let the ship drift like they did on the plains, and Future Industries’ autopilot systems were still in the conceptual phase.

“Again?” Asami smiled wryly as Naga padded over to her feet and curled herself onto them, letting out a long sigh. She petted the poor creature’s back and Korra collapsed into Naga’s side in turn, leaning herself against white fur.

“How can I? That’s two airbenders that said no. I just have a bad feeling.”

“Mm.” Asami had to admit, Tenzin wasn’t the best salesguy. “It’ll work out. Worst case scenario, we can just try again sometime later.”

Korra gave a non-committal grunt. “Everything just seems to be going wrong.”

Asami stared at the back of what was visible of Korra’s head intently. The Avatar had been in a predicament for a while now. The burden of a new avatar cycle, the new airbenders, the spirits in the physical world… She wasn’t sure what she could do- she only knew that she should probably watch out for if or when Korra wanted to talk.

The younger girl sighed. “Enough depressing talk. What are you up to?”

“Other than driving?” Asami smirked, running her fingers through Naga’s fur. “Thinking about Ba Sing Se, I guess. I used to go to boarding school there.”

“What, like an all-girl’s rich academy like in the radio shows?”

Korra had meant it jokingly, but Asami sighed in exasperation and defeat. “Yes, actually,” she chuckled. “Complete with a strict old matron and really dramatic fifteen year old girls.”

Korra sat up and turned her head to stare incredulously. “Really?” Asami nodded and she laughed. The older girl rolled her eyes.

“So, what was fifteen year old Asami Sato like?” Korra asked, turning to sit cross-legged with her arms and chin resting on Naga’s back (Closer to Asami’s hands than she had been prepared for).

Asami frowned for a moment in thought. “Really pimply, for starters.”

“No. Way.” Korra’s eyes sparkled as she stared up at the pilot, a laugh never quite leaving her lips. “Your skin is like, perfect.”

Asami snorted. “It wasn’t always. I have an hour-long cleansing and moisturizing routine everytime I shower.” She wrinkled her nose. “I used to take myself too seriously for ‘all that,’” she said, complete with air quotes. Naga whined at the loss of scritching. Asami got right back to it. “I was a really angry kid.”

“Wow. I can’t picture that at all.”

The nonbender laughed. “I’ve calmed down a lot since. After my mom died, I was really lonely. At school everyone wanted to be my friend for my money or hated me because they thought I was a prissy rich girl.”

Korra looked upwards guiltily at that. Asami caught the look and smiled ruefully. It stung, a bit; it wasn’t as if she hadn’t had her suspicions, but still. Confirming that Korra had seen her that way felt like a kick in the gut.

“I’m sorry,” the Avatar mumbled over Naga’s fur.

“It’s fine-”

“No, I really am,” Korra said, brow furrowing earnestly. “It was petty. And it wasn’t- it wasn’t true at all. I just wanted to see you that way, you know? I wanted to, because you were just so perfect and pretty and nice and I didn’t see how I stood a chance.”

“You’re the avatar. If anyone didn’t stand a chance, it was me- and I didn’t.” It came out sounding much bitterer than she had anticipated.

Korra shook her head. “I got Mako because we were both dishonest and unfair to you. You’re… _perfect_.” She said the word in a sigh, and Asami couldn’t tell what that meant. “You’re so smart and pretty and a kickass fighter too.”

The older girl wasn’t sure what to do with the ardent compliment, or the swelling feeling in her chest and the burning at the edges of her eyes. She just massaged the polarbear dog’s fur absently.

“You’re amazing,” Korra said, tilting her head slightly. Asami thought it was adorable.

“Thank you. So are you,” she said, and meant it.

They shared a small moment in silence, simply smiling at each other. Asami imagined that the twinkling in Korra’s blue eyes was just the reflection of the stars in the sky. The blue glow of the night sky seemed to freeze in the air around them.

The Avatar glanced out the front at a shadow and lightly jerked her chin towards it.

“Cliff.”

Asami turned to see a rocky outcropping fairly close, then went back to the dashboard, gently pushing the ship to the side. Naga keened, displeased at the moving of the feet she had been lying on and the petting in one swoop. Asami laughed.

“Sorry Naga.”

The big white creature just rolled over onto her side, letting out a long sigh through her nose as animals did. Korra laughed and scratched her on the ribs despite her lost perch.

“Spoiled brat.”

Asami smiled as she let the airship glide past the jutting rock, checking the navigation panel. She made sure to right the ship back to its original trajectory and watched as the needle slowly traveled from 15 degrees off to the west to centre.

“So,” Korra started. “What made fiery little Sato into the refined lady she is today?”

She laughed at that. “I’d say Ice Queen more than fiery. As for refined…” Asami sighed. “I was more uppity. I’ll leave it at that.”

Korra snickered.

The engineer smiled. “I stopped taking myself so seriously. It was mostly thanks to my best friend, actually. I was going through some…Drama,” she said, trying not to feel guilty for the lie by omission. “And she stuck with me through it. She was always there to vent or cry to and never turned me away. Even though I treated her badly sometimes.”

“She sounds amazing.”

“She is. I trusted her with everything. Then after a while I just realized… She couldn’t trust me the way I did her. She couldn’t tell me about herself because I was always upset and needing to talk. I wanted to change. I wanted to give back.”

Asami turned to look at the Avatar and found her listening intently, lightly playing with Naga’s fur. She smiled.

“It was hard work getting better. I was in a really bad place. But eventually I did it.”

“She must have meant a lot to you.”

“She did. But in the end I realized that it was really about being honest with myself. If I genuinely couldn’t do it by myself, that would have been okay too. But I realized that I could. So I did.”

She tugged the airship out of the way of another mountain peak, smoothing her thumb over the varnished wood of the steering stick.

“I guess finally getting to know her more made me realize that there are other people in the world.” She laughed. “It sounds so obvious, but… It was the first time that I really understood what it meant. There were so many other people, everyone with their own problems and feelings, all so different from what I knew. The world seemed so much bigger. My problems felt smaller.. and bigger, at the same time.”

She glanced back and saw Korra frown.

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s kind of hard to explain, I just…” Asami sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking up at the ceiling. “I started reading more, because I wanted to explore what other people thought, what other countries thought. Because they seemed so worthwhile, and I realized, that my problems and feelings were worthwhile too. I was unique, but I wasn’t alone.”

She swivelled around for Korra’s reaction. The Avatar’s brow was furrowed faintly, mouth curved downwards. They slanted upwards in a smile not long after.

“That’s really… wise,” she said, laughing. Asami laughed along- it was true, after all. It sounded like something that Tenzin would say, not a rich teenager.

“Anyway,” she said, resting her cheek in her palm. “I just started to care more about being nicer to people. I’m sorry that ended up being such a long story.” She smiled apologetically.

Korra shook her head again. “No, thanks for telling me. Really.”

She just looked at the Avatar skeptically. “I doubt listening about my teenage angst was that interesting.”

“It was. Trust me.” Korra smiled and looked down at her hands. “It helps.”

Asami felt a rush of affection for the girl, and hoped that it did, indeed, help. She had taken to noticing every time the Avatar feigned a laugh during one of Bolin’s jokes or let herself falter when she thought no one was looking.

Korra yawned, open-mouthed and shameless, and Asami’s cheeks tugged upwards insistently.

“Finally sleepy?”

“Yeah,” she grunted, stretching, and sighing after popping her spine a bit. “You should tell me bedtime stories more often,” she teased. Asami just smirked.

“As you wish, Avatar.”

Korra rolled her eyes despite her grin. Asami watched and waited patiently as the younger girl’s smile fell into a pondering stare directed at the floor.

“Asami.”

“Yes?”

“Do you mind if I sleep here with you?” Korra’s hands started fidgeting in Naga’s fur, and she refused to make eye contact. “It’s just, Naga’s out cold and-” her voice started taking on a faintly desperate pitch. “It’s- it gets lonely in my room.”

Asami saw the flush and lip bite of embarrassment at the admission and felt warmth shoot through her, herself. Yes, the Avatar had gotten much more mellow over the year that she had been in Republic City, but Asami was acutely aware of how hard it was for her to confront any weakness, much less admit it. She thought of reaching out over Naga to hold her hand, but the position would be awkward and actually walking around the polarbear dog to comfort Korra would probably have scared the girl off.

So she just smiled as welcomingly as she could. “Of course you can. It gets pretty lonely up here too.”

It was peculiar, Asami mused later on that night as Korra lay on Naga and cushions stolen from the couches downstairs, that the quietest moments of her life were the ones that burned the brightest and clearest in her memory. The butterfly that had landed on her nose after her mother’s funeral. The sun setting over the first bike she had but together. Her first kiss over a bridge behind the school after sneaking out one night. Her last night in Min’s room, just holding each other before she had left.

Avatar Korra, sitting on the floor of the bridge in her faded blue pajamas, hair mussed around her shoulders, eyes as soft as candlelight in the tranquil blue night, with a smile meant only for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woooo. fluff and stuff.
> 
> thanks for reading, and if you have some spare time, please leave a comment? I'd love to know what you liked and what you didn't. Makes me feel more motivated and less like I'm flinging words into the empty void and stuff.


	5. Touchy-Feely

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra visits again. Asami just can't help think about how much Korra reminds her of herself a few years ago.

This time, Asami was fully expecting the knock on her door. She put the brush aside as she stood, doing up her hair with a ribbon as she walked.

Korra stood in the doorway with a pillow in her arms, Naga lumbering behind her. She smiled sheepishly.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

“I was just- uh, passing by and-”

“Can’t sleep?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Asami waited patiently. She could have spared the Avatar and simply invited her in, but this was more fun. Korra scratched her head and stared at her feet, shuffling.

Naga huffed and shoved with her nose, sending Korra stumbling into Asami’s personal space. They just barely avoided colliding and falling over, Avatar’s hand on Asami’s shoulder to steady them both. Korra turned around and scowled.

“Can I _help_ you?”

Naga keened as if in pain. Asami snorted.

“I think she wants to come in,” she said, taking mercy.

“Yeah. Sorry. Do you mind?” Korra asked, as if she wouldn’t have been here if not for Naga.

“Of course not.” She stepped aside to push the door open wider for them. “Make yourselves at home.”

Naga nudged her hand with her nose as she passed by. Korra laughed as she plopped onto the bed.

“She likes you.”

“I’m flattered,” Asami said, shutting the door.

They were landed in a mountain basin for the night, the weather too unruly for a safe flight in the dark. The rapid plunks of rain against the metal of the airship were a muffled echo through the walls and the window in her room pitter-pattered. Asami walked over to where Naga was curled up against the side of the bed and sat with her hands on the animal much like Korra had the previous night.

Korra picked up the open book lying on the bed. “Were you reading?”

“Mhmm,” Asami hummed the affirmative, running her fingers along Naga’s back to the thumping of her tail.

“‘Romance of the Jade Empire’,” Korra read the cover, careful not to lose Asami’s page. “What’s it about?”

“I’m surprised you don’t know,” Asami remarked, taking the book as the Avatar offered it to her. “It’s about one of the most infamous of the ancient Avatars. The nameless one,” she said as she closed the book and gently tossed it the short distance to her desk.

Korra laughed bashfully. “I guess they covered that in one of the lectures I skipped.”

Asami chuckled. “There’s not much to learn, factually. Somehow, all records of who they were were destroyed over the years. There’s very little that historians have pieced together, so far. It’s more a legend, really.”

Korra unfolded her legs to stretch out on her side, head propped up on her hand. Her other hand hung slightly off the bed on Naga’s back, idly stroking.

“It looked more like a story than a textbook.”

“It is,” Asami said. “It’s the novel interpretation by Tsao Wu. She imagined the Avatar was a woman; it’s infamous for being the only version that does that.”

Korra twisted her mouth and frowned thoughtfully. “You know, if I was still connected to my past lives, I’d just be able to ask. I bet that’d make a lot of historians happy, yeah?”

Asami’s eyes shot up from her hands as soon as the Avatar mentioned her past lives. She watched the way that Korra’s eyes didn’t quite meet Naga’s fur that they were directed at, the ever so slightly cynical twist of her mouth, the tenseness in her jaw.

She pretended not to have been staring when Korra looked up into her eyes, smiling again.

“Tell me how it goes.”

“Sorry?”

“The story. Tell me how it goes?”

She started to say yes before she froze, eyes widening a bit. She had lied- the depiction of the Nameless Avatar as a woman wasn’t the only reason Wu’s version was infamous. It was the only chronicling to expand on the... affection with which Empress Lian had referenced the Avatar in her royal memoirs. Asami had been in the middle of reading the part in ‘Romance of the Jade Empire’ where then-Princess Lian had been expounding on her frustration of being attracted to the Avatar at the gates of the Lotus Assassin fortress when Korra had knocked.

Asami was almost sure that Korra wouldn’t react well. From what she had been able to glean from talking to Korra, the White Lotus at the compound did nothing to educate her on the more sociopolitical aspects of the world, and the chances of her having received a talk about sexual orientation was zero.

Well, she could also say that Korra had never been told that loving the same gender was wrong. The question was, was Asami willing to risk it?

She laughed, trying not to sound awkward and nervous. “Does this count as another bedtime story?” She tried, hoping to deflect the conversation.

Korra only laughed and continued to look at her expectantly. Asami felt the back of her neck break out in cold sweat.

“Actually, I haven’t finished reading it yet, and…”

She felt like an idiot grasping at straws. Probably sounded like one, too. _Think, Sato, think._

“Oh, okay.” Korra said, deflated, moving to rise. “I’m sorry I interrupted-”

“No!” The protest came out far more anxious than Asami had intended. “It’s not that I don’t want to read it to you, personally, I just- maybe another night?”

“Asami it’s okay-”

“I just want to talk to you. Stay. Please?”

 _Please believe me, I mean it. And please don’t ask more about the book._ She watched the colours shift in Korra’s eyes, letting out a soft sigh through her nose when the Avatar laid back down.

The Avatar’s brown hair started to cascade around her shoulders at the motion, pooling around the crater where her elbow pressed into the bed. A few idle strands fell the other way, over her chest, hugging her jaw and neck as the swayed by her collarbones.

Korra was decidedly beautiful with her hair down, Asami realized. Perhaps it was the fact that until recently, the only times that she had seen it that way had been during and after fights, where Korra would get beaten up pretty badly. It radiated a calm sense of bravery, and a vulnerability that peace had been made with. She had a fleeting thought that Korra should let it down more often- but then, she realized, that was completely missing the point.

She hadn’t realized that she had been staring, or that Korra had been staring as well until the Avatar began to speak.

“It’s weird, seeing you like this.”

Asami quirked a brow. “What do you mean?”

“Without makeup and with your hair tied up.”

“And is that a good weird or a bad weird?” she asked, her smile a cross between exasperated and skeptical. She was pretty sure Korra wasn’t trying to tell her she was ugly without makeup.

Pretty sure.

Korra almost balked as she realized what she was saying. “Good weird, good weird! I just-” she flushed as Asami laughed. “I’ve never seen you without makeup. It’s different. Good different,” she added hurriedly, and Asami laughed more.

“Nice save, Avatar. You’re a natural.”

Korra scrunched up her face and huffed. Asami chuckled into white fur.

“Can I brush your hair?” She asked, looking up at Korra with her cheek nestled in Naga’s back.

Korra looked confused. “Why?”

Asami shrugged. “Just ‘cause.”

The Avatar shrugged back. “Okay, I guess.”

Naga only gave an unimpressed glance as Asami stood to climb onto the bed as Korra sat up. She settled in behind her and took the brush from where she had left it on the bed, gathering all the strands of brown hair onto the younger girl’s back. She started running the comb through the bottom of Korra’s hair in gentle but firm strokes.

“It’s kind of tangled,” Korra said, mildly embarrassed. Asami smiled.

“Hair usually is before you brush it.”

She laughed as Korra huffed again. They shared a moment of comfortable silence, with Naga’s breathing and the sweeps of the comb in sync with the rain. Korra’s head occasionally nodded with a particularly stubborn knot.

“So like…” The Avatar started. “Is this what girlfriends do?”

 _No, it usually involves a lot more kissing_ , Asami thought to herself, amused. She wondered if she should inform the Avatar that the term ‘girlfriend’ meant the same thing regardless of the gender of the person saying it.

“What do you mean?”

“You know, brushing hair, and girly stuff. I don’t know. No one at the compound really gave me seminars on how to hang out with girls.”

Asami laughed. “You hang out with Bolin and Mako well enough. Why is it different because I’m a girl?”

“It’s not like that, it’s just,” Korra shrugged. “I dunno, I’m usually getting into burping competitions with Bolin or chucking water at Mako.”

“We can go throw down in the meeting room right now if you’d rather that,” she teased.

“No, I like this. This is nice.” Korra sighed. “It’s just that, you know, I wouldn’t do this with the boys. It’d get weird.”

“Why?”

“Well, because, they’re boys,” Korra said, mildly defensive, sounding like she didn’t know how to explain.

“Girls and boys can be touchy feely friends if they want to, you know.”

“I guess, but I just…” Korra trailed off. Asami waited for a while before she realized the Avatar wasn’t going to say anything else.

“There are things you do with Bolin that you wouldn’t do with Mako too, if you think about it.” She ran her fingers through Korra’s hair after the comb, marvelling at the soft texture. “You don’t have to know how to hang out with girls. Just hang out with me.”

Korra was silent for a moment before chuckling. “I sound really silly when you put it like that.”

“It’s what I live for.”

She laughed as Korra lightly swatted her thigh.

“Hold still, or I’m gonna stab you with the comb by accident.”

“I’m sure you’d love that.”

They giggled as Asami run the comb over Korra’s scalp. There was another long pause before Korra spoke again.

“I just- I’ve never been this… ‘touchy-feely’ with a friend before. I’m just- not sure about-”

Boundaries, limits, Asami listed to herself the words that Korra struggled for. She felt her heart swell. This girl. Saviour of Republic city, of the world. Asami had seen her hug people without a second thought, but never held prolonged physical contact with anyone she wasn’t expected to. She realized that Korra wouldn’t be used to gentle touches for the sake of touching, or know what was okay and what wasn’t. She felt affection rush through her at the thought; Korra wanted to be around her as much as Asami did, enough that she didn’t know what to do.

“I know,” she said simply. “How about this? You tell me when it’s awkward for you and I’ll tell you when it’s awkward for me.”

“Okay,” Korra sighed, and it sounded relieved and warm.

Asami brushed the comb through Korra’s hair one last time and smiled.

“Done.”

Korra didn’t turn around. “Can I stay the night?”

Asami blinked. The Avatar took the split second of silence as a rejection and finally faced her, a look of panic and apology.

“I’m sorry, I just-” words spilled from her mouth before Asami could say anything. “My mom used to brush my hair and sing me to sleep when I was little, but then after a while she wasn’t allowed to come by as often and- and this is weird, I’m weird, I’m basically comparing you to my mom and I’m so sorry-”

Korra abruptly clamped her mouth shut, cheeks flushed. Asami gently put her hands on the back of Korra’s head and shoulder, pulling her into a hug. She remembered what it was like to not be able to recall the last time someone had tucked her into bed, or given her a kiss goodnight or brushed her hair. She remembered what it was like to miss her mother, because it was a particular kind of lonely that left her feeling like just the little girl she had been the night her mother had died.

And Korra had looked very much the part, sitting on her bed with just-brushed hair in waves, panic in her eyes and shoulders crawling in on themselves.

“I would love it,” she started, letting Korra pull back to look her in the eyes. “If you stayed the night.”

She hoped the reassurance would help the Avatar feel the burden of asking to stay a bit less. Korra nodded.

“Thanks. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Asami got up to turn her light off, letting the gas switch slowly dim the lantern to nothing. She walked back and peeled her covers back, giving Korra a moment to shuffled over them on the sheets underneath. She climbed in next to her, smiling at the still apologetic look she was given.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said all that. I’ve just been feeling… weird, lately.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, smiling. She knew that Korra hadn’t been the most emotionally stable lately. She was only glad to help.

“I’m still sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

Asami only smiled. She knew the girl would feel embarrassed about the outburst for the rest of the night no matter what she said.

“Do you want to cuddle?”

Korra looked apprehensive. “Is that okay? Is that weird? I’ve never slept with a girl before,” she said, looking defeated.

Asami just barely stopped her snicker, clapping both hands over her mouth. She watched as Korra’s eyes went wide in horror, realising what she’d said. The older girl shook violently in silenced laughter.

“That’s not what I meant-”

Asami buried her face into her pillow, still shaking. She felt like her lung was going to explode.

“I just- _Asami_.”

She felt the girl pelting her with a pillow, but she was too far gone, finally exploding into cackles, tears rising to her eyes.

It was later, when Asami had finished laughing up her entire respiratory system and Korra had finished giving her the cold shoulder that they fell asleep, not quite cuddling but with Korra’s forehead on the nape of Asami’s neck and arms lightly pressed into her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uuuugh. This was really rushed and I lost control of their conversation halfway through. I'm really sorry. I hope it's still somewhat readable. ;n; pls feel free to leave comments on what you want to see improved and stuff.
> 
> If I'm updating late and you wanna know why or have a question, drop by at my tumblr and stuff.


	6. The Illustrious Miss Sato

"I can't  _believe_  that Ryu guy, I swear-"

Asami sighed and continued brushing Korra's hair as she ranted and flexed her fists in anger.

"I'll pound in his lazy, disrespectful, good-for-nothing face-"

"Please don't. You're going to get us arrested."

"Hmph."

She smiled as Korra crossed her arms and pouted. They hadn't taken off from the village that the latest airbender was in, having made the collective decision to have dinner and stay the night before departing. They were sitting on Asami's bed once more with Naga sleeping on the floor, as had become a bit of a habit. "Good thing Mako and Bolin were there to stop you."

Korra huffed once more, then let her hands fall into her lap. "At least Mako's got that stick out of his ass now."

Asami snorted. "Not completely."

Korra laughed. "Never completely, I don't think."

They laughed, and Asami couldn't help but be glad. Being able to talk to Mako without him looking like he was being tortured was nice. He was an emotionally constipated wreck of an ex-boyfriend, yes, but she had always felt like he was the only one who could really relate to her. They'd both had to grow up too soon. It was an incredibly lonely childhood to have.

"Copper for your thoughts?" the Avatar asked, turning her head slightly to look at her friend.

Asami smiled. "Nothing much, I just…"

Korra waited patiently and Asami noted to herself how much the Avatar had matured.

"I can't remember what my mother looked like," she said, watching the comb run through the last of Korra's tangles before she laid it on her lap. "I was six when she died."

She saw Korra shift and turn to sit facing her out of the corner of her eyes. She only looked up when brown hands picked up the comb to put it aside before grasping hers. Asami smiled gratefully.

"I'm okay. I mean, it's not something you ever get over, but I'm okay." She squeezed their hands softly. "I was just thinking about it."

The pads of Korra's thumbs massaged the centre of Asami's palms. "What about it?"

"You were talking about your mother singing to you the other night, and I remembered," she said, enjoying the feeling. "Dad told me that my mother used to sing me to sleep too. I don't remember it."

"I'm sorry."

Asami shook her head. "Don't be. My mom had a bunch of records of her favourite songstress in her old study. She used to play them all the time, and after she died I snuck in to play them when I couldn't sleep. Whenever I try to imagine my mother now, all I can hear is one of the songs on the records."

There were many nights when she simply curled up on the carpet of her mother's old study, listening to the songs about heartbreak and love. After she'd gotten home from Ba Sing Se. Jia's first and last letter. After the equalist uprising, and some nights after.

"What's her name?"

"Hmm?"

"The songstress. What's her name?"

"Suji Seo. She still performs around Republic City sometimes."

Korra laughed. "Too bad I can't go for a concert anymore."

Asami smiled. "I could book her for a private concert outside the city if you want. I'm rich again, haven't you heard?"

Korra smirked and rolled her eyes. Asami could see a brief hesitation before she laid her head in Asami's lap and stretched her legs out. Her feet dangled off the end of the bed.

"How's that going?"

"It's been going okay," she replied, running her fingers in brown hair. "I'm holding off on big deals until I get back, and my PA has been handling the sales."

"Sorry for taking you away."

"I asked to come, you know. And it's fine. Honestly, I would have left most of the selling to Yao anyway. I'm a lot better at diagrams and putting things together than being a CEO."

"You could just leave it to him and go into engineering full-time." Korra closed her eyes as Asami started massaging her scalp. "With exceptions for Team Avatar duties, of course," Korra said, looking up at her with one eye and an impish grin.

"I really couldn't. It's the family, business, and it's all I have left."

"But still- ooh." Korra closed her eye again and tilted her head to the side. "Yeah. Right there."

Asami laughed, massaging that part more insistently, as desired. "You're such a puppy."

Korra grinned languidly. "Hey. Bring me someone who doesn't like head massages and I'll eat Naga's foot."

The polarbear dog in question raised her head to give them an unimpressed look. She settled back into the carpet sighing when the girls only laughed.

"As I was saying," Asami laughed, casually slipping her hair off her shoulder and onto her back where it wasn't accidentally ticking Korra's nose, "I don't think I'd be able to let it go. I wouldn't ever be able to feel good about myself if I ran away from that responsibility." She smiled a little more bitterly. It would have been a lie for her to say that she hadn't thought about giving the company to Yao. He was a good man, sensible, practical, but not cold-hearted.

"Future Industries has hurt a lot of people. I can't just shut myself in my workroom and pretend that never happened."

Even though she had tried for a good while. Drawing up diagrams, wiping all connections with her father and the equalist movement, pretending that that was enough.

Korra pushed herself up on her arms, and Asami admired the way that her body twisted so naturally and fluidly, the tendons in along her arms rising, hair resting a moment on her shoulder before flowing off. The Avatar looked into her eyes, and she just looked so… stricken.

"Asami," she said, with the slightest of cracks from the abrupt change of posture. "What your dad did wasn't your fault."

Her hands, still hovering from where Korra's head had left, fell into her lap. "Isn't it, though?"

The Avatar turned the rest of her body to face her friend too, and grasped Asami's hands again, more firmly this time. "It's  _not_. How can you even think that it is?"

"I could have talked to him more. I could have stopped him earlier by being there for him. I could have-" She stopped as she felt the wet cotton rise to her throat and the vice-like twisting in her face. She swallowed and breathed. No. She wouldn't do this again. She had dealt with it a long time ago and she wasn't going to let it get to her again.

Korra squeezed her hands. "He made his choices. It wasn't any of your fault."

Asami sniffed and gave a short laugh of embarrassment before tugging one of her hands away to wipe her eyes with a thumb. "I'm sorry. I'm okay. I'm just-" she sniffed for the last time, breathing out heavily. "I'm bad at the whole self-forgiveness thing."

Korra smiled sympathetically. "Well, you should work on it. You're  _amazing_."

Asami snorted. "You're too nice to me." She sighed. "Anyway, what I was saying is that the company is all I have left of my family. I want to see it help more people than it's hurt before I quit, if I ever do."

"You're so brave."

"Not really."

"You are. Better than me, anyway. I've been too scared to ever ask you if you blame me."

Asami watched on as Korra hung her head and bit her lip. It was a nervous habit of the Avatar's, she was beginning to notice, one borne from insecurity.

"Korra." It was Asami's turn to grasp the other girl reassuringly. "Blame you for what? You weren't even there. It was me and Bolin. I made the choice to take him down."

"If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have had to."

"If it weren't for you, Amon would have hurt so many more people," Asami countered with a sad smile. "If he made his choices, so did I. You were only doing what you had to."

Korra peered up at her around her bangs, and Asami considered sweeping them out of her face. She missed her chance as the Avatar simply swung them out of her face, sighing. She smiled, and Asami smiled back.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"I don't know," Korra sighed as she went to lie on the bed, next to Asami. "For talking and hanging out and stuff." She shrugged at Asami, who had stretched herself out on her back next to her. "I just feel like we've been friends for a while but I hardly know anything about you."

Asami smiled quizzically and raised a brow, tucking an arm under her head after she shifted on her side to face Korra. "You know me better than most."

"I know, but like… I don't know your favourite colour or anything."

Asami laughed. "I wear enough red to make that kind of a silly question, you know."

"Ugh, come on," she half scoffed and laughed. "Humor me."

The older girl giggled before relenting. "Fine. Ask away."

"Ahem." Korra put on her best imitation of the probending commentator. "Here we have an exclusive interview with the illustrious Miss Sato, CEO of Future Industries, and prettiest member of Team Avatar!"

Asami laughed as Korra waved her hands about dramatically.

"So tell us, Miss Sato, what is your favourite food? Fire Nation cuisine, perhaps?"

"Something a bit more plain, I'm afraid. Starwheat noodles."

"My, my, such humility! Such charm!"

Asami rolled her eyes, unable to stop laughing at Korra's nasally voice. "Well, what about you?"

Korra blinked. "Me?" she asked in her normal intonations, caught off-guard.

"Yes, you," the engineer said, smiling. "Why wouldn't I want to know about Avatar Korra, the most charming interviewer I've ever had?"

The Avatar blushed and Asami desperately hoped she hadn't gone too far.

"Well, um," Korra stuttered. "I guess it's seaprune stew, just like the way my mom makes it. I did really find any authentic southern tribe stuff in Republic city."

"Mm," Asami hummed. "Next question?"

"Um…" Korra tapped her chin, frowning up at the ceiling. "Favourite time of the year?"

"Around autumn. It's so much easier to dress myself around then. You?"

"Summer. All the fun festivals are on then."

They continued on like that for a while, until Asami asked about Korra's favourite sandwich and received no reply, looking over to see the Avatar fast asleep- mouth slightly open, bangs falling over the bridge of her nose. She smiled, her own eyelids growing heavy, envisioning herself softly pressing a kiss into Korra's cheek before drifting off into unconsciousness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay! I wanted to get this finished and posted before I got on my flight back to Canada, but it didn't happen and I got too caught up in unpacking in my new apartment and stuff. I will very much be continuing this story! I've even got the ending planned and all. Sort of. I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
> 
> Sorry if you see any errors, or if the quality of the ending is subpar- I'm literally rushing to get this uploaded in a coffeeshop before it closes because I don't have internet in my new place yet. 
> 
> The songstress mentioned is Susie Suh, and you should totally check out her music if you like singer/songwriter stuff, she's like a Korean and more talented Sarah Mclachlan.


	7. Dance Alone in the Moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shared night on the moonlit deck of Bei Fong's airship. Korra finally breaks down, and Asami dreams that they could be happy.

Asami Sato was not pouting.

She was sitting on the deck of Chief Bei Fong’s airship, blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a mug of tea in hands, watching the moonrise over the lake. She was reverently thoughtful after the recent rescue of the airbenders, the victory in restoring a lost nation. Leaning against the wall beside the door to the stairway, she was contemplating on what it meant to belong to the world and a nation at once, what it would mean for the airbenders who had pledged themselves to the Air Nomads even with family in the Earth Kingdom. She pondered about many a great things, of her own origins as a United Republic citizen, the history of the country and what nationality even meant to the identity of an individual.

And, every once in a while, her mind would not wander to how triumphantly the Avatar moved during the fight and didn’t visit her room that night like usual.

At least, she wasn’t willing to admit it to herself just yet. It was petty, and Asami hated to admit when she was being petty.

She sighed. The Avatar was free to spend her time any way she wished. Asami had convinced herself that their shared nights had been some sort of a promise.

Which it wasn’t.

The lake glowed softly like liquid silver and wisps of clouds floated by the moon like pale white sighs. Asami felt the hum and chugs of the engine resonate through the metal of the deck floor and the cabin wall. She mentally counted the different sounds and attributed them to different parts in her head, listening intently to each clink and whir.

_“Hear that, Asami? That’s the central piston. It has to pop every hour. It’s loud, but don’t be scared.”_

_Asami isn’t. She clings to the worktable with her hands and her chin, only ten years old and a bit too short to be working in her father’s workshop. He carefully tightens bolts around the engine on the table, gesturing to parts and asking the little one to name them, and never disappointed. Asami is enthralled. All the metal and leather seem like an old friend, a part of Papa that she gets to have._

_“It’s very important to know what a well-working engine sounds like. Too many times, a problem will pop up but be invisible until the whole thing goes crashing. Boom!” He exclaims, raising his arms, and Asami giggles. He laughs and ruffles her hair. “But if you listen, you’ll always know as soon as it happens. Remember that, ‘Sami.”_

_“Yes, Papa.”_

_“As soon as you’re old enough, I’m sending you on airships with Yao the rest of the engineers. You’ll learn how to work a real engine, just like I did when I was fixing courier ships back in the day. With hard work! No breaks because you’re my daughter.”_

_Asami swells with pride and happiness; he’s starting his spiel, and she always loves this spiel._

_“Yes Papa.”_

_“And those boys, they aren’t gonna take you for anything just because you’re a girl, and the boss’s daughter,” he sneers, “And you’re going to prove them wrong, aren’t you? You have to be twice as great for half the respect, but that won’t matter, won’t it? Because you’re going to be the best damn engineer in the whole world.” She loves the way he smiles at her and pats her back when he says this, and he says it a lot. “The very best.”_

_She looks up at him and he beams, scooping her up into his arms and kissing her head._

The door clanged open and Asami almost dropped her tea in shock, silently thankful that she had opted to sit on the side of the door nearer to the doorknob, not the hinges. She looked up to see Korra, with her hand still on the door handle, posture rigid. Her tendons stood starkly in her tight clothes, sculpted like some hero of ancient times, skin glowing in the moonlight, a soft blue overlay over her usual earthy skin. Her hair blew softly in the slight breeze and Asami thought she looked like some powerful, divine spirit looking over a moonlit plain.

Then Korra turned to see her on the ground, brow smoothing out, mouth falling slightly open, and she was Asami’s Korra once again.

“Hi,” she breathed, still slightly rattled from the sudden entrance.

“Hi,” Korra replied, looking sheepish. “I was looking for you.”

Asami felt slightly elated at that. “Well, you found me.”

Korra nodded and bit her lip, her feet doing a little nervous tick.

“Wanna sit?” Asami offered, patting the spot on the other side of her.

Korra hesitated, then closed the door behind her and did as Asami offered, looking lost and listless. Asami deliberated on holding her hand as she sat down.

“Want some of the blanket?”

Korra smiled and shook her head. “No need. Warming myself with my breath is one of the first things Tenzin taught me.”

Asami snorted, taking a sip of her tea. “Lucky you. I have to swaddle myself like a penguin seal if I wanna enjoy a quiet night.”

She saw that her attempt at levity had failed somewhat. Korra smiled at her and started to say something before biting her lip again and looking away. Asami sighed.

“Copper for your thoughts?” She asked, smiling in hopes of reminding Korra that she was mimicking her from the other night.

The Avatar did smile. Asami felt triumphant.

“Nothing much, I guess I just- had some stuff on my mind. Missing my parents and all that. I have since I saw them again.”

Asami studied Korra’s face, trying to gauge how she would react to comfort. She could never really tell with headstrong, stubborn, perhaps insecure people like Korra or Mako- too often they’d take offense at what they deemed to be pity.

She wanted to hold Korra’s hand. She understood too well what it felt to miss one’s parents.

“I know, I’m stupid- at least I have parents, yeah?” She laughed at herself.

Asami shook her head. “Don’t say that. What happens to other people has nothing to do with how you feel about your parents.”

Korra insisted on smirking derisively at herself. “But still-”

“I do miss my parents. That why I understand that you would, too. So stop it.”

Korra drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “Sorry.”

Asami sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just… I hate it,” she said, looking at Korra and willing her to make eye contact. “I hate it when you’re mean to yourself.”

Korra stared at her. Her blue eyes seemed to glow, not like the avatar state but as if her soul itself was bursting out through the blue in her eyes, the sky and sea and the night in her eyes. Asami loved Korra’s eyes at night.

“What?” she asked, finally self-conscious. Korra shook her head.  

“Nothing. Sorry. I just- I dunno. I’m being weird.”

Asami smiled as she took another sip of her tea. “It’s okay. As long as you’re being weird with me.”

Too flirtatious. Too, too flirtatious oh no oh no oh no. Asami stared into her tea with the greatest determination not to acknowledge what she had just said. Cold sweat moistened the back of her neck.

Korra laughed it off and leaned her head against Asami’s shoulder. “You’re too nice to me.”

It’s hard not to be, she thought, but thankfully was able to keep her trap shut that time, instead leaning the side of her head on top of Korra’s.

“Just trying to be a good friend.”

Korra hummed. Asami loved the way it resonated through her temple.

“I’m scared.”

Asami remained silent.

“Ever since I left the portals open I just- Everyone’s been expecting so much of me and I’ve done nothing but screw up. I’ve only ever gotten through because someone’s been there for me- I’ve never been alone, I never realized how spoiled I was, I just-”

Korra was shaking now and Asami tugged an arm out from under the blanket to put it around the Avatar.

“I just feel so heavy and angry all the time now. It’s easier to laugh and feel normal during the day, around everyone but- every night I just stay up and think about how useless I am. I’m scared. I’m so scared.”

“You’re not useless,” Asami insisted, hugging her close. “You rescued the airbenders. You’re rebuilding the Air Nation. Everyone is so proud of you.”

“It’s the least I can do for Tenzin, after I took Aang away from him!”

“Korra, what-” she lifted Korra’s face by the chin with her other hand. Tears clung precariously to blue eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“I took Aang away. From Tenzin, from Katara- I was the last connection they had to Aang and now it’s gone,” she said, in a trembling voice, face crumpled.

“Korra. Korra, listen to me- that was never your fault.”

“I let it happen.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“I’m alone now. I’m all alone and I’m scared and I don’t know what to do.”

The words almost jumped to Asami’s lips: you’re not alone, I’m here, we’re all here. But then she remembered that she didn’t know what it felt like to have a legacy of souls behind you, reassuring you, ancient ones that she shared a soul with. Asami could never understand the profound loneliness of having lost thousands of selves, the existential terror of no longer being able to see back into your past for guidance.

So she just held Korra. Held as tight as she could, as if she could somehow convey what she felt through sheer intensity of her hold- the sorrow, the sympathy for the responsibility and heaviness that Korra bore that she could never imagine. What could she understand about having lost a legacy, and being unable to separate yourself from the blame? What did she know about being eighteen with a world that didn’t seem to do anything but heap responsibility and blame upon her?

Asami pressed her lips to Korra’s head as she cried in her arms. She didn’t dare offer a simple ‘I’m sorry,’ even though she wanted to. She held the girl in her arms, rocking slightly, nuzzling her hair with not-quite kisses, until Korra fell asleep.

She didn’t wake her to bring them back inside. She knew that the heavy slumber after tears was crucial, something not to be interrupted- the comforting reprieve of oblivion after emotional agony was what gave to a new day, a sense of heavy, faint hope. So she just adjusted her blanket around them and set the Avatar’s head against her shoulder as a pillow, and resigned herself to sleep for the night.

Asami let herself dream as the moon passed into the horizon- dream that they were just two girls, together, in some other world- some other world where the Avatar was born in a different city, where the Sato heiress was someone else’s daughter, and the two of them never worrying about saving the world, or mistakes, or ten thousand year old legacies. She let herself forget that it was simply a dream, let herself pretend that, one day, it could have been true.

And the two of them would have been happy together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *screams*  
> hey guys- sorry for the long wait! I started school again and I haven't had a chance to write much. So here it is, a kind of crappy chapter, and a promise that I'll try to finish this series before book 4 comes out, at which I'll probably stop following canon at all. Since I'm planning to put Korra and Asami as officially dating by the end of this.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading, and next up is Zhao Fu and queer drama with guest stars Min, Mako, and Opal.


	8. Ambitions like Ribbons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is like fire, love is like ice, and Asami meets an old friend in the unlikeliest place.

 

" _Why can't you love me?" She whispers, struggling against the strong hands grasping her wrists. "What is it about me?"_

_Min just tries to hold her tight._

" _I'll change for you," she says, louder this time, the words scratching up her throat. "Anything you want me to be, I'll- I'll be anything you want."_

" _I want you to be you," Min says, voice broken. "I don't want you to change."_

_She's crushed against Min's chest, arms holding her as if she's the lifeline, as if she's the one that matters. She can't breathe but it doesn't matter because there's a fire, a pulsing fire in her chest burning away her lungs and her heart and her blood and scorching her throat, her cries coming out charred and brittle._

" _Why can't you love me?"_

" _I do," Min whispers into her hair._

Asami watched the sun set over the mountains, arms hugging her knees as the burning orange glow blinked languidly between wisps of clouds. She was sitting on the veranda outside the Bei Fongs' main lounge, trying to douse the slow ache in her chest. The fire licking the sky from behind the shadows of the mountains reminded her of the times her father had taken her hiking up to the mountain graveyard and watched the day end with her mother. Every weekend, it used to be, then once a year, and now... Well. Cold nights alone at the Sato estate were hardly ever interrupted.

She knew it was a bad habit, letting herself indulge in melancholy and loneliness. It felt, refreshing, however, after pushing herself to her fullest capacity for so long. Both parents gone, now, both relationships she'd ever been in ending in being left for someone else, all three of her friends being closer to one another than with her. It was so easy, so validating to simply say that no one had ever really cared about her at all.

It was also completely unfair, of course. Her parents had loved her. Min had loved her, just not in the way that she had wanted at the time. Mako had cared, he just made bad, stupid decisions, and no matter how freely Bolin gave out affection, it was always heartfelt. And Korra...

Oh, Korra. Korra, Korra, Korra. Asami had seen her dancing with Opal earlier that evening. They were beautiful, the both of them, air swirling around them as they circled each other, smiling eyes glowing in the sunset light. Asami had been planning to invite them both to hang out, maybe ask Opal for a tour. Then she saw the way that Korra's eyes smouldered, her imperfect crooked grin lighting up her face, and Asami found herself walking away quietly.

Korra and Opal, they had connected instantly- the smiles, the wordlessly flawless dance, and Asami knew it was in a way only benders could.

(She clearly remembered the way Korra had looked at her when they had first met- the jealousy, the disdain- Well, who's jealous of who now?)

The way that air had become extensions of their souls and mixed seamlessly—Asami found herself, not for the first time, wishing desperately that she had been among the chosen airbenders. If only she could have been among the chosen airbenders, she could understand the thrill of bending an element, she would have understood how it felt to be part of the dance in a fight. She would have been part of a family again, remembered how it felt to be in a house full of people who cared about one another. She would have stopped being left out of Team Avatar in news articles and tabloids, stopped being seen as the useless one left out of the action, the driver, the non-bender.

She would be able to dance with Korra like that.

But why would airbending have chosen her anyway? She was unworthy, bogged down with earthly wants and vain ambitions. What did she know about caring for a collective, or spirituality? She was at once audaciously corporeal and utterly mundane.

Asami let out a small, short laugh. Since when was she so hung up on tabloids?

It was her fault for always being so busy anyhow. It wasn't like Bolin didn't invite her to Team Avatar Noodle Fridays every week. It wasn't like she wasn't the one who worked alone at the estate every night despite being permanently invited to stay at the temple for dinner.

It wasn't like Korra was only allowed to have one girl friend. The Avatar didn't belong to anyone. Asami should have been happy. Korra herself had said that she had never had a girlfriend before Asami, having spent a lonely childhood in the compound. If Asami really cared about Korra, she should have been nothing but happy to see Korra making a new friend.

Instead, she was saddled with bitterness and jealousy that she gathered into herself and tried to smother. She quietly drowned her heartache with self-hatred.

"Asami?"

She turned at the unfamiliar voice, wondering who knew her name that would have access to the Bei Fong estate. A tall woman with dark features stood smiling at the open door, wearing a guard's uniform; Asami wondered if they had met earlier and became pre-emptively embarrassed, preparing to apologize when the recognition hit.

"Asami!" Min exclaimed, rushing forward as Asami jumped to her feet. The engineer found herself crushed against a metal chestplate as she was lifted off the floor.

"I can't believe it!" Min sighed, "I've missed you so much!"

Many things flashed through Asami's mind- the letters she never replied to, the broken promise to keep in touch, how in the world she was going to justify four years of silence—

And how, after all those years, Min hugged the way that she had always done—tightly, whole-heartedly, and with no less love than the day they had parted.

Asami felt her eyes burning up as she circled her arms clumsily around the metal armor and squeezed as tightly as she could.

* * *

 

"I was totally lost when I moved here, of course, you know me," Min said, munching at a piece of sweetbread that they had bought at a streetfood stand a couple of blocks back.

Asami snorted, helping herself to her own snack. "You wouldn't be referring to the time you got us lost in the outer ring the night of my birthday, would you?"

Min elbowed her, rolling her eyes. "That was one time. Anyway," she continued, "So Suyin heard about me graduatin Kyoshi Academy and offered to teach me metalbending and a spot in the security force."

Asami listened intently as the walked down the boulevard, the last tinges of sunset glittering off of Min's armor. The tall earthbender had taken her first break since she had heard that the Avatar was in town to find Asami and take her on a walk along the edge of the cityside to catch up. She was as tall and boisterous as always, maybe even taller than when they had parted. Asami was taller than most young women, and she felt dwarfed. Her friend and past love had given her unconditional and undeserved forgiveness for having fallen out of touch. She was a wellspring of light and love and still everything Asami had fallen in love with.

"And now you're a lieutenant," she beamed. "I never thought your dad would even let you leave Ba Sing Se."

"Well," Min laughed. "He didn't."

"Oh no. Are you serious?"

She nodded proudly. "You know how he wanted me to be his perfect little rising middle class princess."

Asami nodded. Kyoshi Academy, being renowned as the best martial arts and dance school, had a steep tuition and was no stranger to wealthy rising heiresses and even the aristocracy.

"Dating a girl from the outer ring wasn't really part of his grand plan for me," she said, shrugging. "He told me I could marry some aristocrat guy to quiet down the scandal or get out of his house."

"Oh, jeez," Asami frowned. "I'm sorry."

Min smiled and bumped her shoulder. "Hey, why the long face? You know I always hated that bastard. No loss for me."

Many of their late night conversations in their shared room had been about sharing their experience with being raised by a single father and the loss of a mother. Min had comforted Asami over her distant relationship with Hiroshi, and Asami acted as Min's audience for her angry venting about her own father.

"So how did you end up moving here?"

"Lucked out big time, mostly," Min laughed. "Tian and I had only been dating for a couple of weeks, but she didn't get freaked out by me getting kicked out. I didn't tell her because I didn't want her to feel guilty or pressured or anything but, uh," Min chuckled, "She found out anyway and got me on a train with her here."

The earthbender smiled with such fondness that Asami couldn't help but remember the days she had wanted nothing more than for Min to look at her with that much love. She felt elated, somehow, that Min had found someone who saw her wealth as the gilded, lonely cage it was and had whisked her away like the prince Min had always wanted but never expected, being a tall princely girl herself. Tian sounded like exactly who Min needed, exactly who Asami was unable to be for Min, and she was so relieved. Happy. Content.

"She'd been saving up to move here in the first place, I found out," Min continued. "Only place in the Earth Kingdom where marriage restriction laws don't exist."

Asami raised her brows. She didn't know that.

"What's more, it's the only place where they have protection laws for Strange people."

'Strange' had become the unofficial word for those who didn't conform to the gender matrix- those who loved people of the same gender, those who loved regardless of gender, those who weren't the gender assigned to them at birth, and so on. Those who had to hide, at risk of being fired, being kicked out, and violence.

Asami couldn't imagine what it was like to live where the ones in uniform were paid to protect people like her.

"It felt like, before I realized, I was breathing right for the first time in my life. Like some kind of heavy thing fell away. I don't have to be afraid all the time, there doesn't have to be some sort of big secret in my life all the time, I don't have to get paranoid when someone starts giving me the stink eye too much. My entire life is just so... different, now," Min laughed. "I don't even know how to describe it properly. I can't even remember how I used to live. Putting up with my father felt like it was happening to someone else."

Asami tried to understand how it felt, with Min's choppy words, to just... be. To not have to watch the simple things she said, to not be careful how she looked at a friend, always vigilant to never stare a beat too long.

The law stating it was illegal had been abolished in the United Republic a long time ago, but no effort had been made to break the unspoken view that Strange people were abominations, unnatural, unwholesome. Once, following her graduation from Kyoshi, she had had to drive her very terrified date home after being followed during their entire night, and Asami had learned to be cautious. After losing one of her best engineers to a group of drunk gangsters, she had learned to be very afraid. She'd become used to stopping herself from being attracted to another woman or another Strange again.

(Until now)

"That's amazing,"Asami said.

Min smiled back. "This place is amazing. Su is amazing. I can't believe she was able to build this place on her own. I can't believe she just... bought a plot of land and decided it was going to be a bullshit-free place. Where everyone is given the means to achieve their best. Did you know that housing and school is free here?" Min asked enthusiastically.

Asami had heard of the concept; Laoism, after the great philosopher Lao Ma who had conceived of it and wrote the manifesto. All basic necessities would be provided to all by the governing party free of charge, as the right to life was the most basic right of all. To create an environment in which those who did not have currency, a system invented and enforced by the governing party, to die, would be as if the government itself had committed murder of those it deemed unable to play their game.

It was an absolutely sound theory that would break the unfair cycle of those who are poor having no access to education and continuing to be poor through generations, one that the Sato family knew very well. Lao Ma had modeled it after the collective living with no need of money that the Air Nomands lived while she had been taking refuge with them after her husband, Emperor Wen the Mad, had accused her of treason and sentenced her to death by fire. Lao Ma's manifesto was touted as one of the most revolutionary writings on government and philosophy, and yet, it had never been implemented successfully. It was far to easy for power hungry people at the top to re-define what constituted as basic necessities and abuse power under a system in which citizens would have to trust the government.

It hadn't been done- at least, not until now, according to Min. Asami, of course, could not help but wonder how it easy it would be to move here, a perfect city by many standards, as an escape in reality. She looked over at her glowing friend and also could not help but feel happy that Min had managed to escape.

"I'm happy for you."

Min smiled. "Well, we've both come a long way since boarding school, eh, Miss CEO?"

Asami gave a tight-lipped smile. "I'm only CEO because my dad got arrested. And I almost lost the company, anyway."

"'Almost' being the key word."

Asami shrugged.

"Hey," Min said, bumping their shoulders together to get Asami's attention. "Don't be so hard on yourself. Most teenagers wouldn't be able to keep a social life together after losing their dad. You picked up your entire life  _and_  a whole company."

She grinned and slung an arm around Asami's shoulders, stopping them both. "Look at you now. Only nineteen and the scion of Future Industries, genius engineer, and most trusted companion of the Avatar," she rattled off, sweeping her other hand dramatically out in front of them at some imaginary billboard listed with Asami's achievements.

"And you earned every bit of it yourself," Min said fondly, letting her hand rest on Asami's other shoulder.

The heiress snorted and shouldered her off. "You're too nice to me."

"Somebody has to be, heaven knows you aren't."

Asami crossed her arms and faced her. "It's honestly not that big of a deal."

Min rolled her eyes then started to grin slyly when she caught sight of something behind Asami.

"Look who it is," she said, as if it were an inside joke, and something about it unsettled Asami deeply.

"Asami?"

She whirled around. "Korra?"

The Avatar smiled crookedly. "I was looking for you."

Asami's heart fluttered. Min stepped forward just slightly.

"Oh, um," Asami said, "Korra, this is my friend, Min. Min, this is Korra. "Glad to meet you, finally. I've heard great things about you."

"Nice to meet you too," Korra said, slightly bemused at the strong handshake. "I didn't know Asami knew anyone in Zhao Fu."

Min gasped dramatically. "You mean Asami doesn't tell her friends all about me? But we had such adventures together!" She clasped a hand to her chest in mock heartbreak, her chestplate clanking. "Asami, I'm wounded!"

"Stop it, you giant oaf," Asami laughed, pushing her lightly."Korra, this is my friend from boarding school I told you about. We bumped into each other just now."

"After four years! Trying to get this girl to keep in touch is a nightmare," Min joked, earning another playful shove from Asami.

"You said you were looking for me?"

"Oh yeah," Korra said, looking a little bashful. "I just haven't seen you all day and I was wondering if we were still on for tonight."

She was talking about their nightly hangouts, of course. All the tension Asami had felt about Korra and Opal's dance earlier melted into goo inside her. The sight of Korra, blue eyes catching the glints of orange and violet dusk, scratching her head in embarrassment that she wanted to hang out in Asami's room like usual made her feel so... special, special to  _Korra_.

Asami tried to control her smile.

"Of course. You know where my room is?"

"Yeah, it's just next to mine in the west wing, right?"

Asami nodded.

"Well," Min said, grinning impishly. "I should get back to my post and leave you lovebirds alone."

What had unsettled Asami about Min's behaviour around Korra hit her like a sack of bricks.

"Maybe we could go on a double date while you're staying here? My girlfriend would love to meet the Avatar."

"Min," Asami said, trying her best not to splutter. "We're not- she's not-"

Min's smile dropped. "Oh shit. I'm sorry-"

"It's fine," Korra said. She didn't look fine. "I should go, you guys probably have a lot to catch up on. See you later."

Asami couldn't even muster up a 'Korra, wait' as the Avatar fed like a spooked pigeon rabbit.

"Please tell me I didn't just out you," Min pleaded, mostly to herself. The look on Asami's face seemed to say enough. "Asami, I'm so, so sorry-"

"It's fine," Asami insisted, tugging out a reassuring smile. "It's okay," she said, resisting the urge to cross her arms around herself. It wasn't fine and it wasn't okay, because years-old fears plumed in her chest like ink drops in water and Asami felt like the world was closing in on her.

* * *

 

_Next on Contentment...._

 

Korra felt like the world had just opened up.

She was speed-walking through the Bei Fong courtyard, but it felt as exhilarating as a full-on sprint on Naga's back. The stars seemed so far away, the night sky unreachably high. She could breathe in for days, her lungs unrestricted by her ribcage.

The moment Min had said 'girlfriend', the moment she assumed she and Asami were—were lovebirds, the moment Korra realized that such an assumption could be made, that there was an actual living girl dating another girl and presumably was not alone in that—

A chain reaction had gone off in Korra's head, and she could feel the rapid cosmic shift.

She didn't notice where she was going until she walked into Bolin's back and made him drop something on his foot.

"YOOOOOOoooooowww! What the—" he whirled around, clutching his foot. "Korra! You scared the crap out of me!"

"Sorry," she breathed. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I just dropped, uh—" he laughed nervously, letting go of his foot. "Something. I wasn't doing anything—well, I was doing something, but I wasn't doing anything I shouldn't be doing—"

He coughed and leaned on a conspicuously asteroid-less asteroid stand. "Eh-heh. I really was just admiring Su's space... rocks..." he trailed off. "Korra?" he asked, straightening up. "You okay? You seem a little... winded."

"I'm fine," she laughed. "I'm more than fine, I'm great!"

"Oookay," he said, unconvinced by her odd behavior and breathlessness. "Maybe you should sit down," he offered, guiding her to one of the benches.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's quite cheesy to add a preview of the next chapter, but if you're anything like me, drama is like... no. I really hate unecessarily stressful cliffhangers, you know? I acknowledge the plot device significance of them but they really stress me out, personally, and especially after the 100 clexa moment I really wanted you all to know that this is all going to be fluffy and more of a thinkpiece on the Avatar world and queer geopolitics than angst.
> 
> I'm sorry again for the delay!!! This winter has been one huge disassociation for me and I've had a lot of trouble getting through school. Writing makes me feel a lot better but it's also a lot of work compared to unwinding via copious amounts of video gaming, and I'm terrible at self-control or moderation.
> 
> Next chapter is from Korra's point of view, she talks with Bolin about her revelation. I know a lot of people love that Korrasami happened naturally with no cliche "I'm GAY!" moments, but I wanted to take a bit of a spin on the trope, because it is a really important milestone in a queer person's life when their feelings are validated for the first time. And for someone's who lived in a compound, Korra's going to feel thrilled for sure. I was originally planning this to go only for about ten segments, but the way I'm planning it now, I'm probably going to cap out at around twenty chapters. I haven't decided if I'm going to go my own way after the book 3 finale or not! I was going to because I was so sure that Korrasami wasn't going to be canon, but, eheheh, we all know that's not what I have to work with now. Issues of mental illness are very, very close to my heart and I wanted to write about what it's like to love someone who wakes up and doesn't want to be alive, particularly tropes of romanticizing depression or saying that love cures it deeply bother me.
> 
> thanks for reading again and let me know what you think!!! For those of you still here, thanks so much for sticking with me despite my fickle-ass updating schedule and thanks so much for the patience and support!! I never get around to replying but I read all the kind words you leave me and I'm so grateful.
> 
> And check out Eric's Song by Vienna Teng, which I took the chapter title from!


	9. and you have given me the arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She is Asami Sato, who falls in love with girls who can’t love her back and she always has been, Korra just didn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sorry about the random tense change. and style change. I hope it's not too jarring; I've lost a bit of Asami's voice that I had two years ago. I would *hope* the technical quality is a bit smoother, if nothing else.)

_“Why are you doing this?”_

_Jia scoffs, crossing her arms, rolling her beautiful golden eyes and Asami feels her guts twist up as tight as a noose._

_“Jia, please, talk to me?”_

_“I’m done talking. You’re acting like a child.”_

_It stings, it hurts, because Jia used to pet her head and tell her how mature she was for a fifteen year old, how proud she was, and now it’s like the cover of all her efforts are being thrown back to expose her, it hurts—she is a child and no amount of acting will cover that up._

_She’s just never going to be enough._

_“You can’t just—you can’t just say you’re getting married and leave, I—“_

_“What were you expecting?” Jia says, coldly. “That I would stay with you, a girl? That I wasn’t going to go on with a real life after school?”_

_“What were you expecting me to do? Just sit quiet and let you leave?”_

_“At the very least I wasn’t expecting you to come to my workplace, where my fiancé is, and cause a scene.”_

_“You wouldn’t answer my calls,” she says, hoarsely, volume rising, and Jia looks around for a moment before hushing her sharply._

_“Be. Quiet. Are you so petty that you want to ruin my life because I left?”_

_“No,” Asami says, horrified. “No, I just, I needed to see you—“_

_“I thought you were better than this,” Jia snaps. “I’m disappointed.”_

-

Anxiety is a great beast, a chimera of terror and anger, paralyzing and incessantly inciting. Asami feels claws dragging up the ridges of her ribcage, but she’s nothing if not a woman with nerves of steel. Steel, her element: she may not be a bender but she bends steel under her will into creations, she tears into it to carve out the potential held inside. Clockwork hearts, thumping engines, the shielded plates of a ship’s hull; she grew up surrounded by fire and metal, tempered to be nothing short of steel herself. Anxiety is nothing but fuel, to be felt and not shown—a true leader is the one who smiles and carries on when the world falls apart, her father once said. And she is her father’s daughter, whether she likes it or not.

So when Min walks her back to her room, worrying all the way, she smiles charmingly and says she’s okay, really, nothing to worry about, and bids her goodbye. She watches the city dome creak closed in the sky, and wonders if she can fall asleep before she realizes that Korra’s not coming, before she stays awake in the dark willing the door to open to a sheepish smile, before the hours smother Asami’s hope step by step beneath dark heels as they pass.

It’s fine, she tells herself. What were you thinking would happen anyway, she asks, did you really think it would go anywhere? Did you think your little daydreams would come true?

It’s not her fault, she tries to say. She didn’t mean for this to happen, she didn’t look at Korra’s smile and earthy skin and _decide_ to daydream about soft touches and kisses, she didn’t _choose_ to see an exclusive promise of intimacy in their little rendezvous, those thoughts slipped into the pauses between her thoughts, the quiet moments spanning the confessions of an Avatar.

Sure, an old voice says, as if that’s natural, as if that’s an excuse. She thinks about Opal and the pure connection between her and Korra, the wordless trust and sanctity. She thinks about the way they shimmered in the sunset like two spirits from an old story and falls asleep wishing her heart could be made of clean, precise steel.

And when she wakes up, she allows herself one guilty tremble under the bright sunlight before getting up and getting ready, drawing on her makeup as if nothing’s happened.

-

She skips lunch with a flimsy excuse of nausea, and goes for a walk as a remedy. She’s not avoiding Korra. She really does just want some fresh air. She’s not thinking about the way that the easy intimacy in the Avatar’s eyes tensed into unfamiliarity and how she doesn’t want to see that again, not yet.

Because, yes, it’s an excuse but the farther she walks from the dining hall the more she realizes it’s true. She feels sick, dizzy, lost. As if all her resolve from last night is just fizzling haplessly at her feet.

She rounds the corner and hears a familiar melody, wondering if she’s hallucinating for a moment before walking near a door where the muffled sounds get louder and clear into a single voice and a strummed guitar.

“ _People come, and people go… I’ll miss you, I want you to know…”_

Asami hasn’t heard that song in ages. It’s on a vinyl record back at the Sato estate, gathering dust in the study, in the back of her mind, except now the memories of crying on the zigzag patterns of the old expensive rug are pulled out and she finds herself resting a hand on the doorknob, hesitating.

It’s already a little bit open. She pushes soundlessly and steps into a big, shining (as all the rooms in the Bei Fong estate are) room shaped like a semi-circle, the floor going higher in steps the farther back it went, and Asami thinks it’s probably the family’s music room judging by the many closed instrument-shaped cases and one Opal Bei Fong, sitting in the centre with a guitar on her lap.

 _“But oh, how pride, it gets in the way… Though we never speak, in my heart you will remain,”_ Opal sings, taking a breath for the next verse before noticing Asami and faltering.

“I’m sorry,” the apology jumps to Asami’s throat like a kneejerk. “I didn’t mean to interrupt—“

“No, it’s okay,” Opal laughs, running a palm over the guitar strings. “I’m just embarrassed. How long were you standing there?”

“For about a second, I promise,” Asami says, raising her hands in a facetious surrender as she walks further into the room. “I’m sneakier than that if I want to be.”

She lays a hand on the back of one of the chairs, waiting for Opal’s nod to take a seat.

“I don’t doubt that,” Opal says, hunching over her guitar a little bashfully. “Travelling with the Avatar, you’d have to be pretty talented.”

Asami blinks at the compliment, guilt and shame sticking to the insides of her mouth. Why can’t she just be complimentary, nice, not-jealous, kind? She looks at Opal and thinks about how it’s not _fair_ how stunningly pretty she is in such a wholesome way, with her soft baby cheeks and bright eyes. Asami can make any boy fall over himself, she can dominate a room, but she thinks about all the people she’s loved and how she’s yet to be loved back and wonders if she’s capable of making someone’s heart skip a beat the way Opal or Korra can.

“I’m mostly just really lucky,” she quips good-naturedly. “And you’re not so bad yourself in the talent department.”

She gives a grin and a nod at the guitar, and Opal fiddles with the strings a little more, smiling widely if a bit embarrassedly.

“It’s nothing, really, thank you,” she giggles.

“Your voice is beautiful,” Asami insists. “I don’t know many people who can do her songs justice.”

Opal lights up at that. “You know Suji Seo?”

“Of course,” Asami laughs. “My mother loved her. I think I own first editions of all her records back home.”

“Wow,” Opal breathes. “I’m so _jealous_. She passed through here once, when I was little—I think I only have about three songs of hers.”

“I can lend you some of mine when I get back to Republic City.”

“Oh no, thank you, but you don’t have to—“

“I’d really like to,” Asami insists, “It’s not every day I get to meet someone else who likes her too. Is that your favourite song?”

Asami enjoys the way Opal blushes a little bit, because honestly it’s adorable.

“Out of the three I know, yeah,” she says with a laugh and a shrug. “What’s yours?”

“Oh, jeez,” Asami laughs, “what a question.”

Opal giggles along, shifting her guitar so that the neck is pointing upwards and she’s hugging it by the shoulders. “ _One of_ your favourites, then.”

“ _Your Battlefield_ is the only one I know how to play, if that counts.”

Opal’s eyes light up, and Asami realizes she’s made a critical mistake.

“Oh, no no no,” she laughs as Opal starts edging towards her with the guitar outstretched and a grin across her face. She almost wiggles her eyebrows and Asami swears Bolin’s teaching her his infamous bat-your-lashes-and-smile-until-they-say-yes method. “I haven’t played in _years_ —“

“But you _have_ played,” Opal laughs, scuffing her chair closer still, guitar practically on Asami’s lap now. “Pleeaase? It’s not every day that I get to meet someone who likes her too.”

Opal says it, grin turning a little mischievous like she knows _exactly_ what she’s doing and Asami laughs as she takes the guitar.

“I can’t believe you’re suckering me into this,” she scoffs, shaking her head as she shifts the instrument in her hands, trying to trigger her muscle memory. “You’re worse than Bolin.”

“ _I_ think you mean better than,” she fires back with a cute nose scrunch, leaning forwards on her palms, and Asami laughs because this girl is a lot more than meets the eye and she likes it.

“Just don’t be disappointed, I mean it when I say I haven’t played in ages.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to be disappointed by Asami Sato herself,” Opal teases, and Asami snorts.

“You’d be surprised.”

She really, truly, didn’t mean to let that slip out but it did so she just takes a deep breath and strums once to get a feel of the instrument, hoping to bury the comment ever being said or heard.

The melancholy riff comes back to her like an old friend. She remembers the lyrics and doesn’t really have time to think if she’s ready to revisit this again, ready to reopen this wound.

“ _Someday I will ask you if I was a disappointment,_

_I will ask you if you put your hard-earned money_

_into a bad investment.”_

Asami remembers being poor, a little bit. She was very, very young but she remembers the gnawing feeling of a day’s worth of hunger and the cold little room she shared with her parents before things got suddenly and so incredibly better. She remembers being so proud of her father for rising up from poverty with his own two hands, she remembers him talking about how to close a business deal and how to dismantle an engine in one breath and she remembers worrying that she wasn’t enough like him, that she wouldn’t be enough to carry on his legacy.

And what a legacy that was.

_“But you say life is a battlefield,_

_And you have given me the arms,_

_You say I have to fight,_

_I have to keep moving on.”_

Armed with his training, his knowledge, his money, his legacy, she remembers the moment he asked her to join his cause, she remembers wondering if he would have been proud of her if she had just accepted him. She remembers, she remembers, and she doesn’t want to because at nineteen she is a scion of Future Industries, CEO, engineer, a businesswoman carving out her own success from controversy and just a girl with memories of a wonderful father now in jail for being a bad man.

Interrupter becomes the interrupted and Asami nearly drops the guitar when she spots Korra standing by the door, hand on the doorframe, eyes wide.

“Korra,” she breathes, but it goes unheard because Opal says it louder, bubblier, better.

“Hey guys,” Korra says, rubbing the back of her neck. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt— I just heard, and…”

Opal comes to her rescue.

“She’s amazing, isn’t she?” Opal beams, turning to Asami. “Is there _anything_ you can’t do?”

String words together in front of the Avatar. Be a good friend. Be a good daughter _and_ a good person. Not betray her best friend’s trust by developing feelings for her.

Asami swallows her thoughts.

“Thank you—you’re pretty amazing too,” she laughs, charm turned on as she stands and hands the guitar back to Opal.

“Aw, hey, don’t stop,” the girl protests, but Asami’s already halfway to the door.

“I’m sorry, I just remembered Varrick wanted to talk to me today,” she says, giving an apologetic smile-grimace. “Something about prototypes. _Someone’s_ gotta keep him in line, hey?”

That gets a giggle out of Opal so Asami lets herself relax as much as she can while she’s resolutely avoiding looking at the girl standing right next to her under the doorway.

“I’ll see you two later,” she says, with a short wave and a polite glance at Korra before walking out as fast as she can go while still being qualified as walking.

“Asami, wait,” Korra calls after her when she’s almost halfway down the corridor, and she tries not to grimace for longer than a second before turning around.

“Yeah?” She asks, smile stickered to her face.

“I,” Korra starts, and she looks so uncertain, shuffling her feet and rubbing her chiseled arm. “I was looking for you.”

Asami feels like she’s being punched, just a little, tiny whomp in the face, so she just smiles wider and hides behind a laugh.

“Well, you found me.”

Korra tilts her head to the side, so much like Naga does when confronted with a conundrum, and Asami would find it cute but she’s too immersed in the fact that Korra, her friend, her _something_ , the one who comes to her room at night and shares stories they’re too afraid to tell anyone else, is looking at her like she’s seeing Asami for the first time.

Please don’t do this, she wants to beg, I’m the same, nothing’s changed, I’m still me.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? She is Asami Sato, who falls in love with girls who can’t love her back and she always has been, Korra just didn’t know. And now—now the truth is splattered between them like ruinous ink.

“I just wanted to ask if you were okay,” Korra continues. “You said you were sick, I—I was worried about you.”

There’s something soft in her blue eyes then, something gentle and caring just like the way they got when Korra held Asami and told her she wasn’t responsible for what her father did, just that this time there’s something that stops her from coming any closer and it tastes more bitter than sweet on Asami’s tongue.

So she just curls her lips around the brittle taste in her mouth and shakes her head.

“I’m fine. I guess I just didn’t have much of an appetite today.”

Korra purses her lips and Asami wonders which words are standing trial behind them before putting her anxiety out of its misery.

“Sorry for worrying you,” she tries. “I’ll see you later?”

There’s a smothered breath of hope before Korra just nods, and Asami tears herself away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello after two years, I can explain....
> 
> Actually, not really. I have the standard excuses of my life getting really crazy and university kicking my ass, but then I started writing for other fandoms and gradually lost interest. I started writing this story because I thought I was telling a story that wasn't going to be told, that needed to be- the book 4 finale kinda shot that in the face and I felt like I wasn't contributing anything important enough to keep going.
> 
> But recently I finished a full fic that wasn't a oneshot/shorter than 4k words for the first time in my life, start-to-finish wrapped up plot and thematic elements neatly tied up in a bow, for the very first time in my life. It felt really amazing, and the attention I got there spilled over here a little bit (yes, i am talking about you guys from supercorp, you guys are amazing) so I decided to come back and finish this one up. This fic is really where I mark my milestone as passing from a dime a dozen teenage fanfic writer to someone with a clear voice and purpose to their writing. I'm a dime a dozen twenty-something fanfic writer now, but still, I consider this my first written work in what's become my style. I wanted to give it a clean finish. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all your comments- I've read every single one of them and as always, I am so happy with what this has been able to do for you guys. you thank me for sharing this story and I want to thank you for reading, and letting me know. 
> 
> I'll be updating the conclusion to Contentment in a few installments at a time, around 2k words each- and I mean it this time, I promise, most of it's actually written, proofreading is just going slow. the next chapter will be up tomorrow.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for the ride. I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Song is "Your Battlefield" by Susie Suh. This entire fic was inspired by her discography, tbh, please check her out.


	10. you think you are such a heavyweight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world will never wait for the Avatar. But Asami will always wait for Korra.

Asami brushes the hair out of her face, sighing desert air as she straightens up and dusts her hands off. The engine’s almost fixed, she just has to re-tune the capacitors before they’re good to go, so she starts packing the tools into the tin box and taking her gloves off for a moment to air her hands out.

She’s sweaty. Disgustingly so. She’s quite accustomed to it, really, machines have a tendency to heat up a workroom real fast, and she’s long since taught herself to just ignore it but she wipes her forehead on the jacket she’s shrugged off a while ago and wishes she had a hairtie, at the very least, or something. Her hair sticking to her face or falling into a panel every other second is infuriating.

“Asami?”

And, of course, being around the object of her affections when she’s unflatteringly sweaty _always_ helps.

She tugs her hair back into some semblance of order as she looks up at the Avatar standing in the metal doorframe. Guilt closes around her throat because she remembers hoisting Korra onto Naga, holding her in her arms, the Avatar herself so soft and helpless against her. She remembers how she wanted to hold her and keep her safe forever and how spectacularly she’s failed at that so far.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Korra says, with a lopsided grin, hand on her hip. “Do you need any help?”

And Asami chokes a little because Korra hasn’t smiled at her like that since, well, Zhao Fu. She fumbles a little bit with the clasp of the toolbox as she forces out a chuckle and shakes her head.

“I’m good. Did you guys finish out there?”

“Yeah.” Korra takes a few steps into the engine room. “We’re taking a break and I thought I’d check in on you.”

Bitterness kicks in like a gag reflex and Asami swallows it down. Korra was kidnapped the night of that encounter, she reminds herself. It’s not like she had a lot of time to come see you.

(But the fact remains that Korra skipped out on coming to see Asami two nights in a row and she’s finding it hard to take it in stride)

“I’m almost done,” she smiles, hoisting up the toolbox. “Just have to fix the capacitors further in.”

She nods towards the back of the room and almost drops the metal box because Korra takes it as an invitation to step closer.

“I’ll help you,” she says, smiling, and Asami takes the chance to tease her before she can think about what she’s doing.

“Do you even know what a capacitor is?” she says, raising a brow.

Korra huffs with bravado for a moment before giving it up.

“ _No_ , but, I can hand you your tools?”

Asami laughs as Korra crosses her arms and rolls her eyes, and it’s so _easy_ , now that Korra’s reaching back for her, it’s like second nature to just slip into their banter like nothing happened because they’re still friends. Best friends, for Asami, and the knowledge that the mould of their almost effortless connection is still there under and kind of dirt thrown on it is more comforting than she can put to words.

“I think I can fiddle with a few circuits without the Avatar’s assistance,” she teases, turning halfway. “I’m a big girl.”

“Never said you weren’t,” Korra laughs, almost _fondly._ “There’s not much else left for us to do until you weld the rudder. Let me save you some time.”

“Alright, then,” Asami relents, crouching a bit to pass under a bit of the engine to get to the back.

“Watch your-“

_Thunk._

“-head,” she finishes too late, clapping a gloved hand over her mouth to stop her giggles as she straightens up.

“Nngh.” Korra groans. “I’m glad you’re enjoying this.”

Asami keeps her lips tightly pressed and her back turned toward Korra as she sets down the toolbox and reaches down to open a hatch.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Sure, sure.”

Asami plants her feet a few rungs down on the slightly wobbly ladder, looking up to see Korra perched at the edge of the hatch, pouting down at her.

Korra starts a little. “What?”

Asami shakes her head as she steps down one more rung and opens up a panel beside her shoulder. “Nothing. Pass me the flashlight?”

A metal handle is dutifully pressed into Asami’s outstretched hand and she clicks it on and bites onto the end of it to keep her hands free.

It’s quiet work mostly, after that. Asami works mostly at re-plugging tubes and checking steam pressure. She occasionally asks for a wire cutter or something, and Korra quietly hands and takes the tools as she watches Asami work.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” she mumbles clumsily around the flashlight.

“For skipping out on you ever since…”

Ah. Asami’s not quite ready with anything to say when Korra opens the conversation like that, because she wasn’t expecting them to talk about it so openly. Korra’s reached across with an offer to just brush it over and Asami took it and now she’s staring at the mess of tangled tubes, taking the flashlight out of her mouth, trying to think of something to say.

It hurt. It sucked. She’s kind of bitter. She was so afraid she was going to lose Korra.

“It’s fine,” she laughs, a touch more brittle than she wanted. “I’ve had worse reactions.”

“It wasn’t,” Korra fumbles. “It wasn’t because of you being, I just—“

Asami does her the favour of not looking up expectantly, or prodding her confusion. She’s not even sure she _can_ look Korra in the eyes right now.

“I just didn’t know it was a thing. To be both. I always thought it was one or the other, for some reason.”

Asami doesn’t have to ask for clarification. Sometimes it works as a safety smokescreen; her interest in men invokes the automatic assumption that she isn’t interested in anything else, and she walks through life untouched by suspicion.

Most times, it’s just isolating. She doesn’t become any less in love with girls the more she dates men. It’s not something that just goes away and sometimes she feels smothered, stifled.

“Like I said, I’ve had worse reactions.” She remembers years ago Mako wrinkling his nose at a couple of girls kissing and how her hand in his felt so heavy, so trapped in that moment. “Don’t worry about it.”

The smile she sends up at Korra is strained, even by her standards, so she’s not really surprised when Korra doesn’t buy it. Then again, Asami doesn’t either, because just being shocked at the option of _both_ doesn’t explain the way Korra’s been looking at her like she’s a new girl, a new stranger, like she’s found out something that changes too much about the two of them, and Asami’s willing to just… walk past it.

(She’s revolted by herself most days anyway. It’s nothing new.)

“Asami.” She stops just before she can put the flashlight back in her mouth. “I really, really don’t want you to think I have a problem with it. I don’t. I really just… Needed to figure something out.”

Asami’s mind runs laps around that ‘something’, trying to jog past what issue it’s supposed to be a euphemism for, when she finally looks up at Korra and everything just stops. Because the Avatar, soft, almost blurry in the dim green light of the room, is looking down at her, not with the cautious discomfort she’s expecting but with _pleading_ eyes.

Korra opens her mouth and closes it a few more times, trying, while Asami waits, looking at her this time—because she doesn’t know what to expect. She’s come out to more than enough people now, she’s got it all rehearsed in her head but this isn’t anything like she pictured.

Something’s changed between them, but now Asami doesn’t know what it is, and she waits for Korra to put words to what it is because somehow after all the bitterness she’s endured in her life, she can wait. She can wait for Korra. She can wait for the girl sitting atop the hatch of this dark engine room, stray strands of dark hair framing her strong jaw, shoulders of a titan slumped over like the slopes of a tired hill, eyes of a world-keeper narrowing from sheer effort to explain herself.

The world will never wait for the Avatar. But Asami will always wait for Korra.

“You girls done in there yet?”

The gruff voice clangs against the walls a bit and even as Korra jumps, Asami hardly misses a beat before shouting back.

“In a moment!” She closes the panel and shifts her weight to her other foot, turning to the other side of the ladder. “Pass me the wrench?”

“The big one?”

“Yeah.”

“What for?” she asks, a little echo-y in the room as she’s turned away from the hatch opening. Asami hears her clanking around in the toolbox to get to the heavy tool that’s probably at the bottom. “I thought it was mostly smaller stuff down there.”

“Some of the bolts are loose. I heard them clanking around earlier—it’s just unprofessional,” she complains. “Cutting costs on bolts because they think they’re not that important, when a leaky pipe could burn out a part of the engine.”

She tries to put on a dramatic flair for humour, but feels an unexpectedly genuine distaste rise in her stomach. Bypassing safety regulations to save money and mass-produce—it can’t be more obvious that Cabbage Corp’s main goal is to make money, not to innovate or contribute to the world in any meaningful way.

“You could hear that?” Korra says, finally peeking over with the wrench in hand.

Asami steps up a few rungs to take a breath of air that isn’t mostly water. She ends up being closer to Korra’s face than she planned to be and kind of makes the whole motion pointless.

“Y-yeah,” she says, hoping Korra won’t catch the stutter. “When we were tied up. I was trying to figure out how to get us out of here. Listening to the engine is just kind of… habit, I guess.”

Korra softly places the wrench onto Asami’s hand, not letting go. For a second, it’s just them again, soft, connected only by the piece of metal. Korra’s eyes are a deep teal like the darkness at the bottom of a lake and Asami reels because, the moment may have passed but it lingers around Korra’s smile like a trailing silk veil and whatever’s changed between them isn’t the shattering unfamiliarity like she thought.

And she tries not to think, because hope is poison, hope is poison.

“You’re amazing,” Korra breathes, quiet, the kind of quiet when there’s no urgent reason to be but words fall to their knees in reverence before you can catch yourself—the kind of quiet like a prayer, and Asami is afraid. She is afraid because the Avatar does not pray to anyone but herself and spirits and the thought that Korra sees something in her mortality to revere is terrifying, because, whatever it is, it surely isn’t there.

“You’ve said that already,” she murmurs, smiling as she tugs the wrench out of Korra’s hands with no resistance.

“But I still need to remind you, apparently,” Korra says, soft smile stretching into a grin and Asami takes it as permission to roll her eyes and disappear into the hatch to finish working.


	11. landsailor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Asami wonders if she's fated to helplessness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> laptop: crashes for a whole day, not allowing me to write the finish of this fic before school starts tomorrow, forcing me to try to appease you all with a tiny update  
> me, in tears: that's ok

Asami wonders if she’s fated to helplessness. She is helpless when her mother burns in front of her very eyes, remembering the fire and the screaming but not her face or voice. She is helpless when she’s packed away to boarding school while her father languishes in alcohol and refuses to look her in the eyes. She is helpless when Jia steals away all of her firsts and abandons her like a toy, she is helpless when Mako’s heart slips away from her as he lies through his teeth to avoid any blame, once when he first falls in love with Korra and a second time when she comes back to him. She is helpless when her father smashes his mech into hers, fully intending to kill her—not because she cannot save herself but because she cannot save her father, she cannot have him back. She is helpless when she watches the reports roll in, watches the stocks fall, watches her company fall to bits because she might match her father as an engineer but she’s never going to be the businesswoman he wanted her to be.

She is helpless as the Avatar offers her life in exchange for the airbenders, jumping out of the airship with a smile. She is helpless as her best friend falls from the sky, eyes glowing with a dying spirit’s desperation, crying from pain.

She is helpless as the girl she loves lies in bed, unmoving, silent, defeated.

Asami slides the door shut behind her with her heel, balancing the tray of food in her hands, walking to Korra’s bedside and setting the tray down on the desk.

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

It’s half past noon. Asami smiles softly as she sits slowly pulls the sheets down to Korra’s waist, getting ready to help her sit up a little. Korra only blinks up at her passively when she brushes the hair out of her face.

“Did you sleep well? I know I didn’t. Ikki and Meelo were making such a ruckus last night, tinkering in the meditation room,” she says, gently, volume resting between audibility and a low murmur as she wraps an arm around Korra to lift her slightly. “I think they’re making a present for you,” she continues conspiratorially as she fluffs a few pillows beneath Korra’s head. “Don’t tell them I said anything though, I promised to keep quiet.”

She knows she’s not going to get any kind of answer. Korra hasn’t spoken since she was brought back to the temple. Asami keeps going anyway, adjusting Korra’s shoulders comfortably and laying the tray on her lap, caring for Korra the way Katara’s taught her to over the past week.

(Blow on her porridge for her, she said. Make sure her head is supported. Make sure she has at least five glasses of water a day, and massage her legs once a night. Take her out to see the sunlight when you think she’s ready. Don’t ask her how she’s doing. Talk, keep talking around her, but don’t ask anything that she’ll need to answer.

Asami has trouble with that last one. It’s hard, so hard, watching Korra stare at the ceiling day in and day out, not knowing how she feels, but she understands. Korra is so kind, so selfless, so fragile, worry and concern and sympathy are only heavier burdens for her. So Asami smiles and bears them. Resolutely. It comes to her naturally—she’s spent so much time alone, after all. She’s very good at talking to herself.)

“I made you the moonpepper flavoured porridge this time, since you seemed to like that one more.” She spoons up a small amount and blows on it, extending it carefully. “Open up.”

Korra hardly responds to her cheerful request. Asami doesn’t relent, even knowing that most of the food on her lap will go uneaten or go to Naga, but they have an agreement. It’s the only answer Asami’s pushed out of Korra since the incident. One spoonful every meal—Asami promises to take away the food and never push Korra as long as she has one spoonful each meal.

Each bite feels like a battle, each swallow a grueling victory—but Asami’s afraid that it’s a war they’re steadily losing. Most meals Korra turns her head away after exactly one spoon. She’s withering, and Asami pretends not to see it, she doesn’t tell anyone except for Katara, but she’s drifting from their grasp, day by day, breath by laboured breath.

She remembers Bolin telling her about the aftermath of the equalist uprising, how they found Korra and Mako at the edge of an iceberg because she was planning to jump. Rid the world of a useless Avatar and give it a new hope. She wonders, wonders if Korra’s doing the same thing now, if she’s struggling to see the point of staying in this world as herself and Asami feels her throat choke with fire at the thought.

It’s not going to happen. Asami won’t let it. She won’t stand by idly while Korra slips away from her, _again._

When she tucks Korra back in for the afternoon and leaves the room with the still mostly-full tray, Tonraq finds her outside. She closes the door behind herself as he struggles with a polite smile. It’s awkward and jerky and twitches around the edges with what’s an obviously supressed sob and his eyes are so watery and her heart breaks. Tonraq is brave, one of the bravest men she’s ever met, and yet he stands there in the hallway outside his daughter’s room, too afraid to go in. Too afraid to see for himself what’s happening to her. What he thinks he _let_ happen to her.

“Hello, Asami,” he says. “How is she?”

“Had a quarter of the bowl today,” she replies with a smile, hefting up the tray. “See? Better than yesterday.”

Have patience, are the unspoken words. Have faith. She’s not going to get better for a long time, and progress will be slow. Words that Asami’s sure Katara has said to him already.

“Better than yesterday,” he echoes, voice hitching at the end. Asami swears she can see him trembling, and she’s so used to comforting a father too broken to keep going, so ready to help him shoulder along, that she’s surprised by what he does next.

“Let me get that for you,” he says, straightening up with a smile that Korra gets from him and holding his hands out for the tray.

“Oh, no, I can do it sir, don’t worry,” she says, nearly ducking the tray away but he clasps his big hands around it, tugging gently.

“Please, it’s just Tonraq,” he reminds her, smiling so warmly that she lets him tug the tray from her hands. “And it’s the least I can do for how much you’re helping my daughter.”

“I’m just trying my best,” she laughs. “I’m afraid she’s stuck with me until Katara gets back.”

“Nonsense. You’ve been doing a fine job,” he assures her, smiling with the comforting weight of a thick, well-loved blanket.

They make small talk as they walk back to the kitchen. He stands tall, loose, cheery, a kind of upbeat that admits to its vulnerability and Asami sees the same unbreakable blue in his eyes that she so loves in Korra’s. She can see now where Korra gets her quiet dignity from, in her rare moments. Tonraq is the first man Asami has ever met who allows himself weakness and moves forward with kindness, and she’s a little bit in awe. She doesn’t think she should be. The father of a girl like Korra was never going to be an ordinary man, after all.

“Oh, no, let me wash them at least,” Asami laughs as Tonraq places the bowl in the sink, and he gives a hearty chuckle in return.

“You made the food, at least let me wash up, Asami.” He grins, lopsided, like Korra. “I insist.”

“Please, sir—“

“Tonraq.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. It’s warm. “Please call me Tonraq.”

And there’s this look he gives her that feels so much like acceptance, like affection, like impossible faith that only Korra extended to her and in that moment Asami realizes that the extraordinary things that Korra does isn’t because she’s the Avatar. It’s because she’s her father’s daughter, Tenzin’s pupil, a child of the southern water tribe—all the things that make up _Korra_. Being the Avatar doesn’t make someone a kind, passionate person that Korra is.

Asami is sure that Tonraq knows this too, better than anyone. He loved her before she was the Avatar, before she was even born. She feels kindred to him somehow in their devotion, their shared need to protect Korra—he squeezes her shoulder, with a smile, and Asami feels like maybe she belongs.

(Recognition flickers in her chest. A hand on her shoulder, a father’s smile. Lost to her, now.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sdfklvn im so sorry for the tiny update guys i won't be able to write more until the weekend, but only one more chapter to go I think  
> thank you all for the lovely comments, i get happy jittery everytime my email beeps


	12. he was my lion, and i was his gazelle

Asami’s days stay routine until later that week, when she hears yelling and crying from Korra’s room and flat out drops her tray to run.

She hasn’t felt bile and fury like that in a while. Mako’s knelt at Korra’s bedside, clutching her shoulders, crying, begging, heedless of the way the girl is trying to squirm away from him, mouth open in wordless terror, panicked tears falling from her eyes.

“Please, Korra, come back to us, come back to me, _please— I’m sorry—I love you—“_

Asami doesn’t give him any warning. She jabs him in the neck so he’ll let go and Korra won’t get hurt as she yanks him up by a twisted arm and throws him out of the room. She steps out and quietly closes the door behind her in time he takes to untangle himself and jump to his feet indignantly.

“What do you think you’re—“

It’s easy, too easy, distastefully easy for her to twist him around again and kick him down the hallway, out of Korra’s earshot. He’s weak from crying, limp from despair, tired from anguish.

And yet a part of her relishes how easily he tumbles across the wood.

“Asami,” he yells, outraged, when he’s finally on his feet again and Asami rounds on him, hand fisting into the front of his shirt as she pins him against the wall.

“ _Be. Quiet._ ” She can feel his skin heating up the way it does when he’s angry, but she doesn’t care. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Let go of me,” he growls, grappling with her wrist and it’s pathetic. His eyes are red and sunken from crying. His voice is cracked and broken and it almost feels like he can hardly hold himself upright.

“Never do that again, do you hear me?” She says, pounding him against the wall once more, and he yells.

“Let go of me, you _don’t understand—“_ He claws at her wrist. “I can’t take it anymore, I need her to come back—“

“She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

“She hasn’t spoken since it happened,” he sobs. “She won’t eat, she won’t come out of her room—“

“She needs to _rest!_ ” She muffles the insult at the end of her sentence.

“You don’t get it!” He howls. “ _I love her—“_

“ _So do I!_ ” She punches his chest again and he stills, finally. “You think _I_ don’t want to beg her to come back? You think I don’t say anything because I don’t _want_ to?”

She does, she does. She hates it. She wishes she could just be a good person, a good friend, and give Korra her space because it’s the right thing to do, because it comes to her naturally, but it doesn’t. She wants to continue whatever that was between them in that engine room. She wants Korra to explain herself finally now that there isn’t a maniacal cult after her. She wants and wants and she wishes she didn’t have to convince herself to be good, but here she is.

“You know as well as I do that she holds herself responsible for other people. What do you _think_ is going to happen when you beg her like that?”

He’s silent, pretty amber eyes swimming in frustration and anguish, face twisted into a silent sob.

“I just want—I just want,” he tries, “I just want her to know, I don’t want anything back, I just—“

“Love isn’t a one-way street, Mako. You should know better than that.” They’ve finally calmed down to harsh whispers now. “You’re asking too much of her. Just let her rest.”

His hands flare with small embers, and Asami watches. Because Mako is more like the men she’s used to dealing with. Angry, insecure, so eager to smother their weaknesses and vulnerabilities and explode rather than bother to examine their own feelings, give themselves some honesty, some decency—

But the fire in his hands and eyes die down and confirms him for what Asami’s always hoped he’d let himself be: a kind person. The one he is at heart, the one he was born as, the gentleness he shares with his brother. He’s had to grow up too fast, too harsh, faced with an unkind world after his parents died, and he crumples into Asami’s arms as if he remembers, finally, that the two of them are the only people they know who understand what such a shattered childhood feels like.

“I’m sorry,” he keens, afraid but finally honest. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for everything—”

She doesn’t tell him it’s fine, because it’s not, but she rubs his back as he holds her tight around the shoulders. He’s warm. She rests her head against his broad shoulders and wonders, if they’d met when they were older, less angry, less bitter, more sure of themselves; if they’d met when they were more sure they wouldn’t use each other to fill up holes in their lives, if it could’ve been good. If it could’ve been nice, quiet, honest.

He pulls back and wipes at his eyes, and she remembers being so infatuated with the pain in him, the sadness, the chaos in his anger that she wanted to fix. He finally looks at her and offers a tiny, apologetic smile, more of a grateful grimace than anything. They’ve both grown up since then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for another tiny update. I'm really trying to fit writing into my schedule, I swear;;
> 
> and about ff.net- I'll be uploading a mass update after I'm done. I've been spoiled by ao3 and it's just... the process of uploading a fic into ff.net is such a huge hassle to me now, lmao
> 
> thanks again for reading and all the lovely comments!! believe me when I say that they're what keeps me going. I'm so so happy my writing gives you enough of a reaction to write in-depth comments, and I appreciate it so much.
> 
> only a few more chapters to go? unless I decide I hate myself and want to write past book 3 into book 4. we'll see.

**Author's Note:**

> hey visit me at wtfoctagon.tumblr.com  
> I don't have the time to take commissions or write enough to open up a patreon yet but if you'd like to leave a tip of a dollar or so, my paypal is in my profile!


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